Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh claimed to have busted a racket that involved private television channels manipulating their Television Rating Points, or TRP. One of the three channels which includes Republic TV. The other two are regional channels – Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema.
Republic TV’s Arnab Goswami responded soon after, linking the police action to the channel’s coverage of certain events including the police probe into Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, and threatened to file criminal defamation against the police commissioner. “He should issue an official apology and get ready to face us in court,” Goswami said. The police action was initiated on a complaint from Hansa, the firm contracted by Broadcast Audience Research Council, to install audience measurement meters installed in selected households to track television channels that are being watched by people. Singh said about 30,000 such meters had been installed across the country; 2,000 in Mumbai. Information about the households where the meters are installed is treated as confidential so that the data isn’t manipulated.
Republic TV is next on the police’s radar. Officials of the news channels will be summoned either today or tomorrow. “No one involved will be spared,” the senior police officer said, recalling that they earlier believed that some news channels carried out propaganda stories to boost their TRP. Now it appears they manipulate audience data too, he said. Earlier this year, the police had investigated complaints that Republic TV’s editor-in-chief and prime time anchor Arnab Goswami allegedly instigating hatred against the Muslim community while anchoring a program on April 29 on the protests by stranded migrants outside the Bandra railway station on April 14.
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