India

India ranked 157th of 180 countries and territories in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index, falling six places from 151st in 2025. Its score declined from 32.96 to 31.96, leaving its press-freedom situation classified as “very serious.” India has moved in both directions over the past five cycles (150th in 2022, 161st in 2023, 159th in 2024 and 151st in 2025) but has remained in the Index’s lowest category since 2023. Among the South Asian countries covered in the 2026 SMM cycle, only Afghanistan ranks lower.

That assessment concerns one of the world’s largest and most diverse media systems. RSF records around 140,000 publications in more than 20 languages, including approximately 20,000 daily newspapers with a combined circulation exceeding 390 million copies. Government data for 2024–25 record 154,523 registered publications, 908 private satellite television channels, 388 private FM stations and 531 community radio stations. Akashvani, the national public radio network, operated 591 stations and reached an estimated 98% of the population by March 2025.

Scale has not guaranteed effective pluralism. Ownership is concentrated nationally and even more sharply within several regional-language markets. RSF reports that Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani owns more than 70 media outlets followed by at least 800 million Indians. It describes the Adani group’s acquisition of NDTV in 2022 as the loss of one of mainstream Indian television’s remaining centres of critical journalism.

Concentration increased further when the media businesses of Viacom18 and Star India were merged in November 2024. The resulting joint venture, subsequently branded JioStar, is controlled and consolidated by Reliance Industries. At formation it operated more than 100 television channels, combined JioCinema and Hotstar, and reported more than 50 million digital subscriptions, making it one of India’s largest media and entertainment groups. Independent ownership research also finds that the two leading newspapers commonly command a majority of readership in individual regional-language markets, even though the national market appears highly diverse when measured by title numbers alone.

This helps explain why India’s State Media Monitor entry is small relative to the scale of its media system. SMM maps one state-media organisation because political influence over Indian journalism operates not only through direct state ownership but also through private ownership concentration, government advertising, regulatory pressure and law. Media freedom organizations identify public advertising as a significant source of leverage over outlets dependent on central or state-government spending.

The state nevertheless retains an important broadcasting monopoly. Private FM operators are not permitted under the existing policy framework to originate independent news and current-affairs bulletins. They may carry news supplied by Akashvani under prescribed conditions, while proposals by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to permit limited independently produced news have not been implemented. Akashvani therefore remains the only broadcaster legally authorised to originate radio news for nationwide terrestrial distribution, a particularly important position in rural and remote areas where radio remains widely accessible. Of its 591 stations, 230 are Akashvani Kendras equipped to produce original programming, the remaining 361 operating as relay stations.

The State Media Monitor maps one organisation in India: Prasar Bharati, comprising Doordarshan and Akashvani, remains classified State-Controlled (SC). It is a statutory corporation created under the Prasar Bharati Act 1990 and operational since 1997. Its 15-member board includes appointed, ex officio and employee-elected members. The Chairman and most appointed members are named by the President of India on the recommendation of a committee chaired by the Vice-President and including the Chairman of the Press Council of India and a presidential nominee. These provisions offer greater formal insulation than direct ministerial appointment.

Those safeguards have not produced consistently independent governance. Section 23 of the Act allows the central government to issue binding directions concerning sovereignty, national unity and integrity, state security, foreign relations and public order, including directions requiring or prohibiting specified broadcasts. The chairmanship remained vacant from February 2020 until March 2024 and again from December 2025 until May 2026. Prasar Bharati’s official board page in July 2026 showed two part-time-member posts as vacant and did not list the two employee representatives prescribed by the Act, although the executive, finance and personnel posts were separately occupied.

Prasar Bharati continues to receive substantial direct state funding. The 2026–27 Union Budget allocated approximately INR 2,291.88 crore to the corporation, while a further INR 509.24 crore was assigned to the Broadcasting Infrastructure Network Development scheme, which supports broadcasting infrastructure implemented largely through Prasar Bharati. Available audited evidence from earlier years shows that government support has historically exceeded commercial revenue, although a complete audited revenue breakdown for 2025–26 was not identified.

India’s legal environment for journalism also tightened during the review period. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 and its implementing rules, notified on 14 November 2025, removed the previous public-interest qualification from the personal-information exemption in the Right to Information Act and contain no specific journalistic exemption. The change took effect immediately, applying to every RTI application pending on or filed after that date, while most of the framework’s citizen-facing protections are phased in later. Journalists and transparency organisations have challenged the framework before the Supreme Court, arguing that it could restrict access to public-interest information, impose impractical consent requirements on investigative reporting and discourage whistleblowers. On 16 February 2026 the Court issued notice and referred the core questions, including the amendment to the RTI Act, to a larger bench, while declining to stay the framework. The government maintains that the framework properly balances transparency and privacy.

The proposed Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill circulated in 2023 and revised in 2024 was not enacted. The government withdrew the 2024 draft after opposition from digital publishers, online creators and civil-liberties organisations, while saying that a revised proposal could follow further consultation. In April 2026, however, the Committee to Protect Journalists criticised a separate proposal to amend the Information Technology Rules. The draft would extend publisher-style ethics and compliance obligations previously applying to digital news publishers and large streaming services to individual content creators, including independent journalists reporting through YouTube, Facebook and other platforms. The consultation draft had not become law by July 2026.

Criminal and national-security legislation continues to be used against journalists by both national and state authorities. RSF reports increasing judicial harassment through defamation and anti-terrorism provisions, while CPJ has documented legal intimidation, online harassment, physical attacks and digital surveillance across states governed by different political parties. On 17 July 2026, freelance journalist Rupesh Kumar Singh completed four years in pre-trial detention under cases including the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act; RSF and CPJ regard the charges as connected to, or retaliatory for, his reporting on industrial pollution, displacement and the treatment of tribal communities, while authorities allege links to the banned Maoist movement.

India is therefore a case in which the State Media Matrix captures only one element of the wider information-control environment. Prasar Bharati is State-Controlled because the government remains its principal source of financing, retains binding statutory direction powers and exercises decisive influence over appointments within a board that has repeatedly remained incomplete. The statutory public-service mandate and formally mediated appointment procedure are genuine countervailing features, but they have not produced an enforceable editorial firewall or sustained arm’s-length governance.

The greater share of pressure on Indian journalism operates outside direct state ownership: through concentrated private ownership aligned with political power, dependence on public advertising, legal proceedings and regulatory authority over digital distribution. India’s single mapped state-media organisation should therefore be read as one component of a much wider system of influence rather than as a measure of the state’s overall role in the media market.

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