Outlet profile

India TV

Indian right-center, pro-BJP

Owned byIndependent News Service Pvt Ltd, founded and owned by Rajat Sharma (Chairman and Editor-in-Chief) and his wife Ritu Dhawan

FundingPrimarily commercial advertising revenue; privately held with no disclosed outside investors or state funding

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

India TV launched on May 20, 2004, out of a large studio complex in Film City, Noida, built by Rajat Sharma and Ritu Dhawan, who had established their production company Independent News Service (INS) in 1997. Sharma had previously hosted the popular courtroom-format show Aap Ki Adalat on Zee News and Star News, and he leveraged that brand recognition to grow India TV quickly into one of India's highest-rated Hindi news channels. Sharma has longstanding ties to the BJP ecosystem: as a student at Delhi University in the 1970s and 1980s, he was active in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the RSS-affiliated student wing of the BJP, and served as general secretary of the Delhi University Students' Union on an ABVP ticket. Critics and press-freedom monitors have consistently noted that India TV's story selection and prime-time tone favor the Modi government and the BJP while treating opposition figures, particularly Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Delhi's Aam Aadmi Party, with open skepticism or hostility. Media Bias/Fact Check rates the channel right-center in bias with mostly factual reporting, while also noting promotion of pseudoscience in lifestyle content. The channel underwent a visual rebranding in February 2022 but its editorial orientation remained unchanged. India TV is funded entirely by commercial advertising, making it dependent on the broader Indian TV ad market, which has faced pressure from streaming platforms but remains significant for Hindi-speaking mass audiences.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-08-10; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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