News Broadcasting
Print beats TV, radio; Twitter most credible digital news medium: Ormax report
Mumbai: Print media continues to lead with a credibility index of 62 per cent, followed by television (55 per cent) and radio (54 per cent). Social media platform Twitter is still the most credible digital medium for news, according to media analytics and consulting firm Ormax Media, which launched the third edition of its ‘Fact Or Fake?’ report on Tuesday.
Traditional media have higher news credibility than digital media, though most digital media have seen a marginal improvement in their credibility in this track. Twitter witnessed a drop in its credibility index over time: 57 per cent (September 2020) to 47 per cent (April 2021) to 42 per cent (December 2021). Furthermore, The Media Credibility Index is unchanged since the last track (65 per cent), highlighting that fake news continues to be a huge concern amongst the Indian news consumers, said the report.
The report measures the credibility of various news media, as well as the perception around ‘fake news,’ through a survey of 2,000 news consumers across 15 states in India. The first edition was released in September 2020, followed by the second edition in April 2021.
“Fake news, and lack of news credibility in general, continues to be a growing concern globally. Almost two out of three Indians see fake news as a problem, and that should be a major cause of worry for all news companies,” stated Ormax Media founder and CEO Shailesh Kapoor. “We launched this report in 2020 to enable more informed conversations on this topic. In the subsequent editions, we plan to study these indices by languages, to understand if there’s a difference in news credibility between Hindi, English and other major Indian languages.”
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: 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.
