Anant’s blog: Of Lalit Modi, Shashi Tharoor and the Abbys

What’s happening to Lalit Modi? How is the enquiry into his ‘wrongdoings’ going? Is the BCCI now better informed on all his ‘crimes’? Is he the villain the BCCI painted him to be?

 

What’s happening to Shashi Tharoor? Was he really a part ‘owner’  the IPL Kochi team? Is it proven that his lady friend was allotted shares in the Kochi side in lieu of favours that Tharoor promised?

 

What’s happening to Sharad Pawar?

 

What’s happening?

 

News channels and newspapers ‘break’ a story and then bludgeon us with it till we’re almost senseless. As viewers, we trust the news sources and believe that, since so much time and space is devoted to it, the news must be such that it impacts us greatly.

 

Then, inexplicably, the particular news item drops off the radar. Why?

 

One possibility is that it was unimportant to begin with. We, the viewers/ readers, were made into suckers, forced to consume a news item only because there was nothing else at the moment that channels and newspapers could hold our attention with.

 

Another possibility is that the news item was, indeed, important, but that the news sources, for reasons only they know, have decided to back off and ‘help’ consumers forget that particular news item.

 

Both are worrying. It’s like Campaign India suddenly backing off on the Goafest and the Abbys.

 

We’re only a trade organ. We don’t create the news and developments, we report on news and developments and comment on them.

 

As we’ve done with the Abbys and the various controversies surrounding the 2010 edition. In this instance, it’s not that the news was unimportant to begin with. It’s just that, dangerously, the Ad Club and the AAAI have decided to throw a lid on it.

 

This is despite letters being drafted (but not sent) asking those agencies who were found to have voted for their own entries to return metals.

We have no clue why the letters were not sent.

 

We have no clue if the Ad Club and the AAAI have managed to resolve the issue with the various parties involved – even if a large number of members do not want a resolution, but an example made.

 

We have no clue (that’s not really true, we have access to gossip) in the form of official comment on the legal correspondence exchanged between Mudra and Leo Burnett and between Leo Burnett and the organisers of the Abbys.

 

That’s because no one’s talking, in a bizarre conspiracy of silence.

 

Which we will not join. As we do today, we’ll remind adlanders of the issue and ask the Ad Club and the AAAI for a status update, as we’re doing now. That’s because, as I said earlier, the news was not unimportant to begin with. It affects the credibility of the awards, it impacts the reputation of India’s premier recognition in advertising, it demotivates the youth, it sets appalling precedents.

 

And it endangers the continuance of the Abbys itself.