NDTV, which has been often been caught peddling fake news, on the 11th of March took to Twitter to pat itself on the back for doing a remarkable job in terms of TRP – in the UK. NDTV took to Twitter to proclaim that “When the rating system isn’t rigged, here’s the result” essentially saying that when rating systems are not rigged, NDTV ends up doing far better than Republic TV.
The only problem with NDTV lauding itself for leaving Republic TV behind? The details tweeted by NDTV were from the UK and not India.
If one looks at the graphic shared by NDTV closely, one realises that the data that NDTV is sharing is not from India, but is an indication of readership in the UK. The infographic clearly states that the data has been taken from BARC, UK, for the week March 1st to March 7th.
BARB, the UK is essentially like BARC, India. It is an organisation that collects viewership data across 28 million TV and broadband-only households in the UK. According to their website, they answer the following three questions through their research:
- Who is watching?
- What are they watching?
- When are they watching?
- Which screen are they watching on?
- How did the content get to the screen?
It is based on this data that NDTV took to Twitter to pat itself in the back. But that was not all.
Turns out, not only is NDTV lauding itself based on UK data, it is also trying to compare itself to Republic Bharat – the Hindi channel of the Republic network brand, headed by journalist Arnab Goswami.
One might as what the problem with that might be?
Simple put – NDTV is trying to tell people that when the data is not rigged or skewed in the favour of one channel (they mean Republic) then NDTV as a news channel would do much better than Republic. To prove this point, what NDTV does is take data from the UK instead of India and compare itself to a Hindi channel in the UK – which consists of a largely English speaking audience. In fact, NDTV even added that they are ahead of channel AajTak, which is again a Hindi channel.
It stands to reason that in a country where an overwhelming majority of the people speak only in English and do not understand Hindi, any English news channel would do far better than a Hindi channel, even if that channel belongs to Arnab Goswami. However, for NDTV to use that data to tout itself as a channel that outranks Republic TV, based on illogical data, only proves the desperation to downplay the achievements of Arnab Goswami and his network.
