Barkha Dutt, a senior journalist, was on the receiving end of harassment yesterday. A man circulated her personal phone number to his friends. And while a few people called the journalist to threaten her, one person sent her the picture of his genitals on WhatsApp.
In today’s day and age where technology has become accessible to all, many people misuse the power of social media to sexually harass women by sending them obscene pictures.
While such cases need to be dealt with a heavy hand, what made things worse was when Barkha took the screenshot of the chat and posted it on her Twitter, without blurring it. “I am sorry to have to share this on twitter. But this number is sending me nude pictures of his genitals in the name of Nationalism @IPSMadhurVerma (sic),” Barkha captioned the picture.
Scores of twitteratis slammed Barkha for sharing an obscene picture on the social media platform, instead of reporting it to the police. “Writing the content was good enough no need to sensationalize it by posting the pic, please avoid (sic),” commented Anita Kapoor. While another Twitter user, F@Malik, wrote, “This is not the way to share such images on twitter. You are responsible journalist and have to respect others feelings (sic).”
Devina Sarwatay, a PhD Student, Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad, says, “As a public figure, you are held accountable for everything you do, especially on social media. Given her status as a journalist, she perhaps needed to respond with more restraint. However, I feel, it is not difficult to imagine a similar reaction from any person under such circumstances.”
Strangely, even Twitter hasn’t taken the picture down yet. “It is a clear violation of the terms and conditions of Twitter and the microblogging site should have taken down the picture already by now,” explains social media expert, Karthik Srinivasan, adding, “Although Barkha has given a reason for posting the picture, Twitter should still take the post down. Having said that, Barkha should have been more responsible in putting up something which is so obscene. However, we also should be sensitive about this, as it is a case of sexual harassment and the law will take strict action against the man who sent her his picture.”
However, the incident also brought out the quirky side of the netizens, who did not shy away from giving Barkha some gyaan about a statement where she called a terrorist “misguided youth”.
Several people called the boy (who had sent the picture of his genitals to Barkha) misguided and asked her to counsel him. “I’m very sorry for this ma’am but what if I say “misguided youth” now? This is how even we feel when you try to sympathize terrorists. But I’m not one like you and feel very bad that something like this happened to a woman (sic),” tweeted Krishna Sidharth Perwala.
