Palash Sen: Salman Khan Helped Start Paid PR Culture

Days after Salman Khan used a Bigg Boss 20 Weekend Ka Vaar episode to call out paid negative PR and online trolling, singer-actor Palash Sen has pushed back with a pointed claim: the superstar helped build the very machinery he is now criticising.

Salman’s stand on Bigg Boss 20

Salman told viewers that he knows who trolls him, and that fan clubs and paid campaigns often work quietly to damage actors and films. He defended Katrina Kaif after she faced weight-gain trolling, and questioned the ethics of those who accept money to review-bomb or inflate ratings.

Palash Sen’s counter

Speaking to Screen, Palash Sen called Salman’s remarks brave—but refused to treat him as an outsider to the practice. “He’s a part of starting this,” Palash said. He argued that such problems “never arise from the bottom of the hierarchy” and suggested that long-standing stars have all engaged with PR machinery at some level.

“If you live by the sword, you are also going to get killed by the sword,” he said.

Why the online signal is getting harder to read

Palash recalled an instance where a trailer featuring an A-list female actor gathered more dislikes than likes, after which YouTube disabled the dislike count. For ordinary fans, that is the real cost: a viral number that looks like public opinion may actually be a paid artefact. The same blur applies to star ratings, fan-club pile-ons and comment-section outrage.

• Paid campaigns can make a dud look like a hit—or a good film look like a failure—before it opens.
• When the industry’s top tier is accused of using the same tools, the trust gap widens for everyone.
• Viewers are left guessing whether an online wave is a real reaction or a managed one.

Read the reaction like a reviewer

The practical takeaway is not to ignore online sentiment, but to cross-check it. If a wave of hate lands on a film or star, ask who benefits and whether rival releases are nearby. Watch the trailer yourself, compare reactions across platforms, and treat any single metric as a clue rather than a verdict.

Palash, whose band Euphoria recently marked nearly three decades with the album Dhoomsday, knows both sides of the fame game—he has also appeared on screen in Filhaal. His larger point is about accountability: if the industry wants cleaner conversations around films, the cleanup has to begin with the people who set the rules.

Source: The Times of India