News Broadcasting
Supreme Court gives clean chit to sting ops in public interest
MUMBAI: For news channels conducting sting operations, this is a piece of good news. Rejecting a plea for putting curbs on the media and television channels from conducting sting operations, the Supreme Court has given a clean chit to NDTV while upholding the conviction of lawyer RK Anand.
NDTV had carried out a sting operation in the BMW hit-and-run case that exposed collusion between the prosecution and defence counsel.
A Bench comprising Justices BN Agrawal, GS Singhvi and Aftab Alam said, “It is not our intent here to lay down any reformist agenda for the media. The norms to regulate the media and to raise its professional standards must come from inside.”
Rejecting suggestions that channels should carry out sting operations only after getting prior permission from the court, the Bench said,”Such a course would not be an exercise in journalism but in that case the media would be acting as some sort of special vigilance agency for the court. On a little consideration, the idea appears to be quite repugnant both from the points of view of the court and the media. It would be a sad day for the court to employ the media for setting its own house in order; and media too would certainly not relish the role of being the snoopers for the court.”
A plea that the telecast should be permissible only after submitting the sting material to the court was also rejected. Pre-screening of the material would amount to pre-censorship, the court said.
The apex court also held that the sting operation was not a media trial but in the larger public interest.
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.
