News Broadcasting
Teacher files defamation against channel for fake sting
NEW DELHI: Even as a Delhi Metropolitan Court granted bail to Live India reporter Prakash Singh and co-accused Virender Arora, Delhi school teacher Uma Khurana who was made the victim of a fake sting two months earlier filed a criminal defamation case against the television channel.
The sting operation aired on 30 August showed the teacher running an alleged prostitution and resulted in widespread violence in the Darya Ganj in central Delhi where the school where she was teaching is located.
In her criminal defamation case before the court of Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Jindal against the channel, its CEO Sudhir Chaudhary and accused reporter Prakash Singh, the teacher has said she had been removed from service and subjected to different kinds of mental agony, strain, harassment, humiliation and earned a bad name in the eyes of the public and society.
Earlier, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Alok Agarwal granted bail to the reporter and businessman Arora.
Forty-one year old Khurana had been discharged by Aggarwal earlier this week and fixed 15 November for argument on charges against the other three accused — TV reporters Prakash Singh and Rashmi Singh, and Arora. The police have charged the trio for criminal conspiracy for using forged electronic record.
A week after the telecast, it was discovered that the operation was a hoax and the girl ‘victim’ shown in the TV sting was, in fact, TV journalist Rashmi Singh. Khurana was granted bail on 11 September.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
