Economic Times & the Cleavage

Ever laid your hands on the Economic Times and seen its contents? Business News did you say? Market news did you say? Yes, it has both kinds of news but it also has a lot of pictures in their articles. Most of the pictures have women in them & some pictures have women showing their cleavage, bare legs & the like.

Can’t understand the connection between the Economic Times & the Cleavage. How are they connected? Are they trying to indicate something through this? Are we supposed to interpret their articles in a different manner after we see the picture?

Pick up today’s Bangalore edition of the newspaper and you’ll find close to three photos of women showing their cleavages in articles that have headlines like, “Education share down despite more allocation”, “No current a/c deficit woes“ and “Watch It, Monsoon Unyielding”. Now what is the picture got to do with such stories.

One has to compare the Business Line (a business newspaper from The Hindu stable) and the Economic Times. Business Line does look scary what with column after column & every inch of the newspaper having only the written word and hardly any pictures interspersed in it. Contrast that with the Economic Times, ads and pictures make it anything but scary. Their objective with inserting pictures in their articles is an understood thing but not to the extent that they have stooped.

Economic Times is considered one of India’s leading & respected business dailies and they need to ensure that they don’t give the readers crap or soft porn through their newspapers. Already the Times of India (from the Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd, the same company that also owns The Economic Times) has crossed into trivialization & can be safely called a tabloid. Do we need their business newspaper doing the same?

The issue is also to do with the levels we have made women come down to. It is really sad to say the least. Do we really need a cleavage showing woman to tempt us in reading an article? It is probably time that the Economic Times bring an end to the cleavage showing, short skirt wearing pretty women from their newspapers. The readers have plenty of other options to satiate their desires for the fairer sex.

There is no doubt that business newspapers are often considered boring as a result of which the newspapers have to make their articles easy for the readers to understand. It is probably in this context that the Economic Times is resorting to the use of pictures. May be they pushed it a little too much.

Ironically the readers are lapping all this up without any complaints looks like. The Economic Times is India’s No. 1 Financial Daily. Whoever said sex sells….