Goafest and the freedom of press <span class="txtblack">Presented by ImagesBazaar.com</span>

I am writing this on a flight to Goa because yesterday’s piece by Prajjal Saha got such a huge reaction.

Many of the comments attacked the Goafest jury members for discussing the winners prematurely with the media. Another lot let fly at The Economic Times (ET) for playing party pooper at Goa. A third bunch turned on afaqs! (on behalf of ET) saying that we were calling the grapes sour because the business daily had run the partial list of winners and we hadn’t.

I’d like to clarify a few issues on behalf of afaqs!

The article said that not one but several jury members had apparently spilled the beans in spite of swearing confidentiality. And that keeping the secret was their primary responsibility and not ET’s.

All the same, even if ET was not technically beholden to keep the secret, its leaking of the winners for the second year in a row was hurting Goafest and humiliating the organisers.

Just as ET believed that it had a right to report whatever it found out, we said, Goafest had a right to protect its interest. If ET was repeatedly damaging the festival, the organisers should act against the paper as they best could, we argued.

We also pointed out that ET could get away with this because of its clout. If a smaller media brand had acted in the same way two years running, the organisers would undoubtedly have acted against it.

On to the matter of ‘sour grapes’.

afaqs! probably covers Indian advertising more vigorously than any other brand because we have more people on to it than anybody else. So could we have got the kind of story that ET got? Of course, no question about it.

Would we have run it? No, we wouldn’t have because though we believe in the right to print without fear or favour as much as anybody else, we think that right has to be used with discretion. Jumping the gun at an industry festival to damage it is not afaqs!’ idea of emphasising its belief in the freedom of the press – though, mind you, we are not even a media or online partner at Goafest.

As one of the comments on yesterday’s piece points out, there are dozens of award functions in India each year. In each case, the jury is made up of people in the profession or business. Journalists on the beat and the jury members – whether the function relates to films, auto, finance or any other area – invariably know one another closely. I have no doubt that reporters on virtually any beat could find a few winners for almost any award show in India before they are announced - if they wanted to. But I can’t remember one instance where a media brand has printed the results prematurely and done to an event what ET has done to Goafest – not once but twice.

No body of professionals deserves it and certainly not the thousands of people who look forward to Goafest every year.