Click here to know more about the writer.

Next only to making films, media-bashing has become the favourite business of filmmakers. One does not know whether it’s the huge stakes involved in films these days or plain insecurity that is driving producers and directors to insane heights where they hold journalists responsible for all their woes.

‘If my film has flopped, it must be because of the bad press it got - and undeservedly so, if I may add.’
‘No audience at the theatres? Oh, it has something - make that everything - to do with the reviews in the press.’
‘This newspaper is anti me, that journalist hates me, this magazine is biased, that trade journal is wrong, this one’s more friendly to my rival camp. Everything is wrong with the world which judges my film but nothing’s wrong with my film. How can it be? I’m infallible!’

The latest to join the growing list of media-bashers among film producers and directors is Rakesh Roshan. Unable to bear the criticism his son, Hrithik, has been getting for his poor performances in his films - whether Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage or Na Tum Jaano Na Hum - Roshan Sr seemed to have a single-point agenda after the two debacles - to blame the media for it all.

And, just two years back, why did he love it all when the same media called his son the new superstar? Why, even Hrithik has given interviews to the effect that there are journalists who are anti-him because of which he was being badly written about. Pray, if the press is not reliable now, why was it believable when Hrithik was reigning supreme - as much at the box-office as in the columns of newspapers?

Earlier, in July last, when Subhash Ghai’s Yaadein bombed at the box-office, he went around town, blaming the media for the failure. And he used the very platform of the media to blame the media! If the media was so powerful that it could make or break a film, wouldn’t members of the fourth estate be making films and, therefore, crores?

Strange, how while Ghai grudged the bad reviews his film got and held the press responsible for the debacle of Yaadein, he never gave credit to the media for his past hits. If it was only the press which was responsible for the flopping of Yaadein, it must have also been the single reason behind his Hero and Ram Lakhan becoming huge hits. How come he forgot to thank the press then or even acknowledge their ‘contribution’, but didn’t miss a single opportunity to condemn it now?

Filmmakers need to realise that no single journalist, nor the media collectively is so powerful, as to be able to twist the fate of a film one way or the other. By assuming that the media wields so much power, they are in effect underestimating the intelligence of the paying public. The audience can get influenced by media reports but to an extent only. Finally, it is the paying public which decides whether or not they want to see a film.

A few months after Yaadein, Karan Johar did a Ghai. Not willing to accept that his K3G wasn’t flawless, he went all out to badmouth the few scribes who had ‘dared’ to point out the flaws in his film, in their reviews. He was silenced not by those journos but by the falling collections of his multi-starrer as weeks went by.

While Ghai, Karan or Roshan have at least proven themselves as filmmakers of repute before going hammer and tongs against the press, there are even upstarts like Arjun Sablok who’ve begun to indulge in the new pastime of punching the press to avoid admitting their own failures. Arjun’s only claim to fame is that he was once an assistant to Yash Chopra. Of course, his maiden directorial venture, Na Tum Jaano Na Hum, would have embarrassed his mentor as much as it did the audience - but that didn’t prevent Arjun from letting off steam and blaming one or two journalists for his film’s debacle.

Trying to understand why filmmakers have, of late, been invariably blaming it on the journos, one feels, it’s because they make the easiest scapegoats. No director has the guts to blame his stars or producer or technicians even if he is convinced that they were responsible for the flop. The reason for this is that they dare not antagonise the stars/director/technicians as, you never know, they might, some day, want to make another film with them.

But if they blame it on the press, it is such a collective term that nobody individually can take offense. And, let’s admit it - the media is far too forgiving to take offense and hold grudges. Those among the press, who do hold grudges, don’t really matter because the readers whom the media caters to, knows fully well who’s reporting the truth and who isn’t.

Which brings one to the point of honest reportage. Yes, even among the media, there are suckers who’ll write any nonsense to please a star/director. It is such journalists who, in a way, prompt filmmakers to indulge in media-bashing because they’ve got filmmakers in the habit of reading only good things written about them. When the press persons write good things, the film people enjoy the adulation even if it’s fake, but if they write bad things, they hate it even if it’s cent per cent true.

Only if our filmmakers used the time they waste in finding faults with the media, in actually finding faults in their scripts and films and in trying to understand what went wrong, they will at least be doing something constructive and useful. May be then, their next films will be better. And the honest media will also say just that!

India Syndicate