News Broadcasting
BBC settles race bias claim of Indian-origin scribe
The BBC has reached a ?50,000 out-of-court settlement with a journalist of Indian origin who accused it of racial and sexual discrimination, the Press Trust of India has reported.
Fifty-one-year-old Sharan Sandhu told an employment tribunal she had been repeatedly passed over for promotion between 1991 and 1999 because of her colour and gender.
The BBC, while making the settlement, asserted it did not accept her career was affected by gender or race discrimination.
Sandhu, who joined the BBC in 1990 as a sub-editor, claimed that a corps of White male journalists reigned over the World Service with a “mentality that demeaned and embarrassed ethnic minority colleagues”.
Sandhu, a mother of three, claimed that being passed over for promotion between 1994 and 1999 led to stress and depression.
Speaking on behalf of the corporation, a spokesperson said: “The BBC has shown Sharan exceptional goodwill. We do not recognise the colonial mentality she described. We gave Sharan extensive opportunities to develop her career.”
He said the BBC “stands by its selection procedures, both successful and unsuccessful, that Sharan went through and believes that the procedures are demonstrably fair.”
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.
