Indian Police Accuse Popular TV Station of Ratings Fraud
NEW DELHI — Ever since it hit the airwaves three years ago, Republic TV has been one of India’s most-watched, most-talked-about and most-contentious television news channels.
Its lead anchor, Arnab Goswami, has made a name for himself shouting down opponents, embracing right-wing causes and aggressively backing up Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-leaning administration.
In turn, Republic TV’s ratings have soared.
But this week, police officials in Mumbai accused Republic TV and two smaller channels of rigging the ratings system by paying poor people the equivalent of a few dollars a month to tune into the station and leave their televisions on. In some cases, police officials said, people being bribed to watch the English-language channel did not speak English and were annoyed to tie up their television sets with programming that they couldn’t even understand.
Those viewership levels are not just a source of pride: They are also a major factor in a station’s ad revenue, therefore fueling its continuing ability to shape the public discourse.
Republic TV’s dominance has emerged at a time when many Indian journalists say that their freedoms have been eroded under Mr. Modi’s government and that he has tried to manipulate the country’s news media, especially the airwaves, like no other prime minister in decades.
Mr. Goswami, a co-founder of the channel, has strongly denied the accusations of bribery, saying that he was being targeted because of recent coverage that was critical of the Mumbai police. He seems to thrive on confrontation and has used this moment to rally his millions of viewers.
“Come to my house, come to my office, if you have the guts,” he taunted the police on Thursday night. “Come and arrest me!” He called Mumbai’s police chief, Param Bir Singh, “a spineless man” and “a pliable tool.”
The news that Republic TV had fallen under investigation struck like an earthquake among the country’s media elite. Mr. Goswami is one of India’s best-known darlings on the political right, and throughout Friday, other news channels ran wall-to-wall coverage of the investigation.
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Television screens in a showroom in Mumbai. Many Indian journalists say their freedoms have been eroded under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.Credit…Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
A free press has played a crucial role in protecting India’s democracy since the country’s independence from Britain in 1947. But under Mr. Modi, liberal media outlets have been repeatedly targeted by senior government officials, who have berated editors, cut off advertising and ordered tax investigations.
At the same time, right-leaning media organizations like Republic TV, which some refer to as the Fox News of India, are often given preferential treatment.
In Mumbai, the tables are somewhat turned. The state government is controlled not by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party but by an alliance of parties, including the Indian National Congress, that are rivals to Mr. Modi.
So even though Mr. Goswami is a friend to the central government, in Mumbai he plays the role of the opposition, hammering state officials and wearing down interviewees in a barrage of loud invective. He recently unleashed a tirade against the Mumbai police, accusing them of bungling an investigation into the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, a popular actor who died in June, apparently by suicide.
Media commentators said that it was difficult to determine exactly what was behind the bribery accusations, and that the ratings system had been flawed for years.