Several news outlets report on A Raja’s 2G case based on a Times of India advertorial!
IANS published a wire story based on an advertorial and several news outlets publish it without even checking it.
Oreo is a popular sandwich cookie that is sold in over 100 countries and the parent company Mondelez decided to “launch” the biscuit again in India as part of a marketing strategy. Recently a video of former Indian Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s press conference went viral in which he said India won the World Cup when Oreo launched in 2011.
In the press conference, he then said Oreo is re-launching in India in 2022 and paused a person next to him responds thtat India would win the cup again referring to the T20 Cricket World Cup to be held on November in Australia. The press conference itself was a marketing stunt planned by Mondolez’s marketing company Leo Burnett to promote Oreo, which also imitated a 2016 Press Conference of MS Dhoni after the 2016 T20 World Cup held in India.
Rajdeepak Das, CEO and Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett South Asia, said, “Oreo wanted to share its point of view on the most playful event of the year. When it comes to cricket, we all have our beliefs, be it wearing the same socks each time or sitting in a particular chair and many more. And we thought, if Oreo can encourage everyone to stick to their beliefs of 2011, maybe we can recreate our time from then and bring back the Cup this year.”
With Oreo’s “#BringBack2011” marketing strategy, Oreo’s parent company Mondelez tied up with Times of India and released an advertorial. As part of the advertorial, ‘Times of India’ reprinted 3rd April 2011’s front page which carried the news about India’s 2011 World Cup victory in its 5th October 2022 issue. On the back of the first page, it said “today’s front page is not a mistake. TOI is joining Oreo to #BringBack2011 to help Team India bring back the Cup. Oreo is launching itself again in 2022, because when it launched in 2011, Team India won.”
Along with the News about India’s World Cup win, the first page however carried another news article about the infamous 2G Case which was titled “CBI charges Raja, babus, top corporate bosses for 2G fraud.” The article was about CBI’s charge sheet against A Raja and others related to the case. Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) mistook it for a recent development and published a newswire titled “2G Scam: CBI files first chargesheet, names Raja as ‘mastermind’.” The news wire had been withdrawn and IANS India had put out a tweet regarding their mistake.
https://twitter.com/ians_india/status/1577664868320043009
The same story from IANS had been reported by reputed news outlets such as Business Standard, Deccan Herald, DNA India among others. Bizarrely, DNA India’s article also included about Former Union Telecom Minister A Raja’s acquittal by the special court in 2017. Almost all news outlets realized their mistake and subsequently deleted their articles.
Recently, several news outlets issued incorrect news about an alleged vandalism in “Shri Bhagavad Gita Park” in Brampton, Canada. Interestingly, a travel advisory from Canada for its citizens travelling to India also was misreported by several news outlets in the past weeks.
