News Broadcasting
Khabar Pakki Hai? verifies viral content on News18 India
MUMBAI: With the exponential growth of social media, innumerable photos, videos and stories are shared every second, but there is no way to check the authenticity of all this content. This results in a lot of misinformation impacting opinion and resultant actions by people believing these false & fabricated stories.
As verification of such viral content becomes all the more vital, News18 India brings ‘Khabar Pakki Hai?’ – a show that will not only check facts and test the authenticity of viral content but also try to assess whether it is real or just propaganda.
TV18 Broadcast Limited, is a part of Network18 Group. Through its subsidiary, TV18, the group operates news channels such as CNBC-TV18, CNBC Awaaz, CNBC-TV18 Prime HD, CNN-NEWS18, and News18 India. TV18 also operates a JV with Viacom called Viacom18, which houses a portfolio of popular entertainment channels such as Colors, Colors HD, Rishtey, MTV India, MTV Indies, Comedy Central, Vh1, Nick, Sonic, Nick Jr and Viacom18 Motion Pictures.
News18 will also reach out to the relevant authorities and try to get the official statements on the unverified news. In the event of two conflicting versions of the same story that are hard to fact-check, the show will present the opposing narratives highlighting the contradiction in the story.
Through this show, the channel will examine news doing the rounds on various social media platforms and attempt to debunk disinformation and try and tell fake from real news. Watch ‘KhabarPakki Hai?’ starting 22 April, every Saturday & Sunday at 7.30pm.
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.
