Virat Kohli has been labelled a ‘bully’ for not wanting himself or family to be recorded while travelling at Melbourne airport. The incident, contrary to the media’s position, is an important reminder: Kohli’s on-field cricketing achievements do not give the media the right to have off-field access to his life at all times.
Media voyeurism is supposed to satisfy our dopaminergic rush to get a glance into the private lives of prominent figures. It’s the same reason why crass journalists at times grovel to players and athletes during press conferences. It’s the same reason we have a history of lionizing sports icons and cultural figures. But when is enough, enough? In recent memory, Kathy Freeman was the first, then it was Jana Pittman. After that it was Leyton Hewitt and the family of the late Steve Irwin. We all understand the place of hyperbolic language in our lexicon, but when ridiculous phrases like ‘carrying the hopes of a nation,’ are attributed to athletes, we need to be brought back to earth.
Fetishing celebrities is a toxic game, and the media only has itself to blame when said celebrities don’t want to play the cat-and-mouse game of attention. Absent a king and queen to worship, a charismatic head of state to admire, and a lineage of religious heroes to emulate, we turn to athletes and performers to fill the pathetic void we crave to satiate.
The journalists that recorded Kohli’s family felt they had the right to do so while he was travelling through Melbourne airport with his family!Then, radio personality Tony Jones labelled Kohli a ‘bully’ for picking on a female journalist.
Jones went on to argue, ‘Nat was out there with a cameraman, and a Channel 7 reporter was out there with his cameraman, and they were doing what we do on a daily basis, essentially, and that’s be at the airport to actually get identities, whether they’re politicians, whether they’re sporting identities, or whatever. He took umbrage, he being Virat Kohli, to the fact that the cameras were focused on him. Well duh! You’re a batting superstar; you’re a global superstar in the world of cricket, and he takes umbrage to the fact that the attention is focused on him.”
No, Tony, Kohli took umbrage at the fact that journalists were invading his privacy while passing through Melbourne airport with his family. I’m sorry, how is this relevant to the world of cricket?
The accusation that Kohli was a bully for pushing back against journalists filming him is preposterous. Everyone has the right to privacy. Yet, our TMZ-like culture of clickbait, voyeuristic desires, and inappropriate attachments to celebrities is what drives a large part of the media culture in Australia.
Some famous athletes do crave the spotlight; Virat Kohli is not one of them. Kohli’s reputation for being a private person is well known in the cricket world.
While uncomfortable to admit, parts of the Australian media continually search for a messiah to idolise. Virat Kohli is good at hitting a ball and leading a sports team. He is not a war hero, brain surgeon or Nobel peace -prize winner, and we ought to move away from this form of idolatry, and while Kohli and players like him may be worshipped in India, some journalists forget that players are just athletes, not Gods.
Coverage of athletes within the context of their sporting codes is fine; filming them and their families is a total invasion of privacy. Some may argue that filming Kohli at the airport is of interest to the public, but that does not mean it is in the public interest.
