Media coverage of sex blamed for breast baring

BRITISH boyband Blue has blamed the media for encouraging stunts such as Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl breast baring.

The group say the mainstream press' increasing coverage of sex has made performers believe they have to push boundaries to get noticed.

"It's a shame that you have to bare one of your breasts at a Super Bowl match just to get publicity," singer Duncan James said in Singapore, where the band attended the MTV Asia Awards. "You lot lap it up, that's why they do it," he told reporters, calling Jackson's stunt "disgusting."

"You lot write about it and it makes front page news in every bloody country. You're promoting it."

The band also said it was shut out of tomorrow's Brit awards the UK equivalent of the Grammys due to a lack of support from the British press.

"I think a lot of people from England are quite pissed off with the Brit Awards... because they're so hooked up on the Americans," Blue member Lee Ryan said.

"The English are very, very fickle, the press are very fickle. They'll shove their artists aside for, say, Justin Timberlake." Blue won the Pop Act award in 2003 and the British Breakthrough Act award in 2002 at the Brit Awards.