Let the Truth Prevail | |
Type | Daily newspaper |
---|---|
Format | Broadsheet |
Owner(s) | The Times Group |
Editor | Jaideep Bose |
Founded | 3 November 1838 |
Language | English |
Headquarters | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India |
Country | India |
Circulation | 1,872,442(as of April 2023) [1] |
Sister newspapers | The Economic Times Navbharat Times Maharashtra Times Ei Samay Mumbai Mirror Vijaya Karnataka Bangalore Mirror Times Now News |
ISSN | 0971-8257 |
OCLC number | 23379369 |
Website | timesofindia |
The Times of India, also known by its abbreviation TOI, is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the fourth-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest selling English-language daily in the world. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] It is the oldest English-language newspaper in India, and the second-oldest Indian newspaper still in circulation, with its first edition published in 1838. [7] It is nicknamed as "The Old Lady of Bori Bunder", [8] [9] and is a "newspaper of record". [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
Near the beginning of the 20th century, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, called TOI "the leading paper in Asia". [17] [18] In 1991, the BBC ranked TOI among the world's six best newspapers. [19] [20]
It is owned and published by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (B.C.C.L.), which is owned by the Sahu Jain family. In the Brand Trust Report India study 2019, TOI was rated as the most trusted English newspaper in India. [21] In a 2021 survey, Reuters Institute rated TOI as the most trusted media news brand among English-speaking, online news users in India. [22] [23] In recent decades, the newspaper has been criticised for establishing in the Indian news industry the practice of accepting payments from persons and entities in exchange for positive coverage. [4]
TOI issued its first edition on 3 November 1838 as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce. [24] [25] The paper was published on Wednesdays and Saturdays under the direction of Raobahadur Narayan Dinanath Velkar, a Maharashtrian social reformer, and contained news from Britain and the world, as well as the Indian Subcontinent. J. E. Brennan was its first editor he died in 1839 and George Buist became the Editor. It became a daily in 1850 under him. George Buist had a pro British editorial policy and a Parsi shareholder Fardoonji Naoroji wanted him to change his editorial policy particularly in background of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. However, Buist refused to change his editorial policy or give up his editorial independence. After a shareholder's meeting he was replaced by Robert Knight. [26] [27] [28] [29]
In 1860, editor Robert Knight (1825–1892) bought the Indian shareholders' interests, merged with rival Bombay Standard, and started India's first news agency. It wired Times dispatches to papers across the country and became the Indian agent for Reuters news service. In 1861, he changed the name from the Bombay Times and Standard to The Times of India. Knight fought for a press free of prior restraint or intimidation, frequently resisting the attempts by governments, business interests and cultural spokesmen, and led the paper to national prominence. [30] [31] In the 19th century, this newspaper company employed more than 800 people and had a sizeable circulation in India and Europe.
Subsequently, TOI saw its ownership change several times until 1892 when an English journalist named Thomas Jewell Bennett, along with Frank Morris Coleman (who later drowned in the 1915 sinking of the SS Persia), acquired the newspaper through their new joint stock company, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.
Sir Stanley Reed edited TOI from 1907 until 1924 and received correspondence from major figures of India such as Mahatma Gandhi. In all he lived in India for fifty years. He was respected in the United Kingdom as an expert on Indian current affairs.[ citation needed ]
Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd was sold to sugar magnate Ramkrishna Dalmia of the industrial family, for ₹20 million (equivalent to ₹2.9 billionorUS$34 million in 2023) in 1946, as India became independent and the British owners left. [32] In 1955 the Vivian Bose Commission of Inquiry found that Ramkrishna Dalmia, in 1947, had engineered the acquisition of the media giant Bennett Coleman & Co. by transferring money from a bank and an insurance company of which he was the chairman. In the court case that followed, Ramkrishna Dalmia was sentenced to two years in Tihar Jail after having been convicted of embezzlement and fraud. [4]
Most of the jail term he managed to spend in hospital. Upon his release, his son-in-law, Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain, to whom he had entrusted the running of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., rebuffed his efforts to resume command of the company. [4]
In the early 1960s, Shanti Prasad Jain was imprisoned on charges of selling newsprint on the black market. [33] And based on the Vivian Bose Commission's earlier report which found wrongdoings of the Dalmia – Jain group, that included specific charges against Shanti Prasad Jain, the Government of India filed a petition to restrain and remove the management of Bennett, Coleman and Company. Based on the pleading, the Justice directed the Government to assume control of the newspaper which resulted in replacing half of the directors and appointing a Bombay High Court judge as the chairman. [34]
Following the Vivian Bose Commission report indicating serious wrongdoings of the Dalmia–Jain group, on 28 August 1969, the Bombay High Court, under Justice J. L. Nain, passed an interim order to disband the existing board of Bennett, Coleman & Co and to constitute a new board under the Government. The bench ruled that "Under these circumstances, the best thing would be to pass such orders on the assumption that the allegations made by the petitioners that the affairs of the company were being conducted in a manner prejudicial to public interest and to the interests of the Company are correct". [17] Following that order, Shanti Prasad Jain ceased to be a director and the company ran with new directors on board, appointed by the Government of India, with the exception of a lone stenographer of the Jains. The court appointed D K Kunte as chairman of the board. Kunte had no prior business experience and was also an opposition member of the Lok Sabha.[ citation needed ]
In 1976, during the Emergency in India, the Government transferred ownership of the newspaper back to Ashok Kumar Jain, who was Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain's son and Ramkrishna Dalmia's grandson. He is the father of the current owners Samir Jain and Vineet Jain). [35] The Jains too often landed themselves in various money laundering scams and Ashok Kumar Jain had to flee the country when the Enforcement Directorate pursued his case strongly in 1998 for alleged violations of illegal transfer of funds (to the tune of US$1.25 million) to an overseas account in Switzerland. [36] [37] [38] [39]
On 26 June 1975, the day after India declared a state of emergency, the Bombay edition of TOI carried an entry in its obituary column that read "D.E.M. O'Cracy, beloved husband of T.Ruth, father of L.I.Bertie, brother of Faith, Hope and Justice expired on 25 June". [40] The move was a critique of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's 21-month state of emergency, which is now widely known as "the Emergency" and seen by many as a roundly authoritarian era of Indian government. [41] [42]
The Bombay Times is a free supplement of The Times of India, in the Mumbai (formerly Bombay) region. It covers celebrity news, news features, international and national music news, international and national fashion news, lifestyle and feature articles pegged on news events both national and international that have local interest value. The main paper covers national news. Over ten years of presence, it has become a benchmark for the Page 3 social scene.[ citation needed ]
The Times of India - and thereby the Bombay Times - are market leaders in terms of circulation. The name of this supplement contains the word Bombay, which is the older Portuguese name of the city. It is not retained in the new supplement Mumbai Mirror that comes with Times of India.[ citation needed ]
In late 2006, Times Group acquired Vijayanand Printers Limited (VPL). VPL previously published two Kannada newspapers, Vijay Karnataka and Usha Kiran, and an English daily, Vijay Times. Vijay Karnataka was the leader in the Kannada newspaper segment then. [43]
The paper launched a Chennai edition on 12 April 2008. [44] It launched a Kolhapur edition in February 2013.[ citation needed ]
Introduced in 2013 [45] and awarded for the second time in 2016, [46] "The Times of India Film Awards" or the "TOIFA" is an award for the work in Film Industry decided by a global public vote on the nomination categories. [47]
TOI is published by the media group Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. The company, along with its other group of companies, known as The Times Group, also publishes Ahmedabad Mirror , Bangalore Mirror , Mumbai Mirror , Pune Mirror; Economic Times ; ET Panache (Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore on Monday to Friday) and ET Panache (Pune and Chennai on every Saturday); Ei Samay Sangbadpatra , (a Bengali daily); Maharashtra Times , (a Marathi daily); Navbharat Times , (a Hindi daily).
TOI has its editions in major cities such as Mumbai, [48] Agra, Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Aurangabad, Bareilly, Bangalore, Belgaum, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Dehradun, Delhi, Gorakhpur, Gurgaon, Guwahati, Gwalior, Hubli, Hyderabad, Indore, Jabalpur, Jaipur, Jammu, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolhapur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Madurai, Malabar, Mangalore, Meerut, Mysore, Nagpur, Nashik, Navi Mumbai, Noida, Panaji, Patna, Pondicherry, Pune, Raipur, Rajkot, Ranchi, Shimla, Surat, Thane, Tiruchirapally, Trivandrum, Vadodara, Varanasi, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam.[ citation needed ]
This article appears to be slanted towards recent events.(December 2019) |
TOI has been criticised for being the first to institutionalise the practice of paid news in India, where politicians, businessmen, corporations and celebrities can pay the newspaper and its journalists would carry the desired news for the payer. [4] [52] [53] The newspaper offers prominence with which the paid news is placed and the page on which it is displayed based on the amount of the payment. According to this practice, a payment plan assures a news feature and ensures positive coverage to the payer. [4]
In 2005, TOI began the practice of "private treaties", also called as "brand capital", where new companies, individuals or movies seeking mass coverage and public relations, major brands and organisations were offered sustained positive coverage and plugs in its news columns in exchange for shares or other forms of financial obligations to Bennett, Coleman & Company, Ltd. (B.C.C.L.) – the owners of TOI. [4] [52]
The B.C.C.L., with its "private treaties" program, acquired stakes in 350 companies and generated 15% of its revenues by 2012, according to a critical article in The New Yorker . The "paid news" and "private treaties" practice started by TOI has since been adopted by The Hindustan Times group, the India Today group, the Outlook group, and other major media groups in India including Indian television channels. [4] [54] This division of the company was later renamed Brand Capital and has contracts in place with many companies in diverse sectors.[ citation needed ]
The "paid news" and "private treaties" blur the lines between content and advertising, with the favourable coverage written by the staff reporters on the payroll of TOI. [4] The newspaper has defended its practice in 2012 by stating that it includes a note of disclosure to the reader – though in a small font – that its contents are "advertorial, entertainment promotional feature", that they are doing this to generate revenues just like "all newspapers in the world do advertorials" according to TOI owners. [4] [52] According to Maya Ranganathan, this overlap in the function of a journalist to also act as a marketing and advertisement revenue seeker for the newspaper raises conflict of interest questions, a problem that has morphed into ever-larger scale in India and recognised by India's SEBI authority in July 2009. [52]
Under an ad sales initiative called Medianet, if a large company or Bollywood studio sponsored a news-worthy event, the event would be covered by TOI, but the name of the company or studio that sponsored it would not be mentioned in the paper unless they paid TOI for advertising. In 2010, a report by a subcommittee of the Press Council of India found that Medianet's paid news strategy had spread to a large number of newspapers and more than five hundred television channels. [4] [55]
Critics state that the company's paid news and private treaties skew its coverage and shield its newspaper advertisers from scrutiny. [4]
The Hoot, a media criticism website, has pointed out that when a lift in a 19-storey luxury apartment complex in Bangalore crashed -- killing two workers and injuring seven -- all the English language and Kannada language newspapers, with the exception of TOI, called out the name of the construction company, Sobha Developers, which was a private-treaty partner. An article titled "reaping gold through bt cotton" -- which first appeared in the Nagpur edition of TOI in 2008 -- reappeared unchanged in 2011, this time with a small-print alert that the article was a "marketing feature". In both cases, the article was factually incorrect and made false claims about the success of Monsanto's genetically modified cotton. [4]
According to a critical article published in the Indian investigative news magazine The Caravan , when the Honda Motors plant in Gurgaon experienced an eight-month-long conflict between management and non-unionised workers over wages and work conditions in 2005, the Times of India covered the concerns of Honda and the harm done to India's investment climate, and largely ignored the issues raised by workers. [4]
Vineet Jain, managing director of B.C.C.L., has insisted that a wall does exist between sales and the newsroom, and that the paper does not give favorable coverage to the company's business partners. "Our editors don't know who we have," Jain said, although he later acknowledged that all private-treaty clients are listed on the company's Web site. [4] Ravindra Dhariwal, the former CEO of B.C.C.L. had defended private treaties in a 2010 interview with the magazine Outlook and claims that the partners in the private treaties sign contracts where they agree to clauses that they will not receive any favourable editorial coverage.[ citation needed ]
There have been claims that TOI would strike deals with advertisers only if they removed their advertisements from other competitor newspapers. [4]
TOI is also embroiled in an active lawsuit against the Financial Times . In 1993, when the Financial Times was preparing to enter the Indian market, Samir Jain, the vice-chairman of B.C.C.L., registered the term "Financial Times" as a trademark of his company and declared it his intellectual property in an attempt to stymie the Financial Times and prevent them from competing with The Economic Times , which is owned by B.C.C.L. [4]
In 1994, when the Hindustan Times was the top-selling paper in New Delhi, TOI slashed their prices by a third, to one and a half rupees after having built up their ads sales force in preparation for the price drop to make up for the lost circulation revenue. By 1998, the Hindustan Times had dropped to second place in Delhi. TOI took a similar strategy in Bangalore where they dropped the price to one rupee despite protests from Siddharth Varadarajan, one of the editors of the newspaper at the time, who called the strategy "predatory pricing". [4]
In 2018, Vineet Jain, managing director of B.C.C.L., and Sanjeev Shah, executive president of B.C.C.L., were caught on camera as part of a sting operation by Cobrapost agreeing to promote right-wing content through the group's many media properties for a proposed spend of ₹500 crore (US$60 million), some of which the client said could only be paid with black money. [56] B.C.C.L. has responded to the sting claiming that the video that was released by Cobrapost was "doctored" and "incomplete" and that the CEO Vineet Jain was engaged in a "reverse-sting" of his own to expose the undercover reporter during the filming of the video. [57] The company is yet to release the video evidence.[ citation needed ]
Publisher
Mumbai is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city of India with an estimated population of 12.5 million (1.25 crore). Mumbai is the centre of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the sixth-most populous metropolitan area in the world with a population of over 23 million. Mumbai lies on the Konkan coast on the west coast of India and has a deep natural harbour. In 2008, Mumbai was named an alpha world city. Mumbai has the highest number of billionaires out of any city in Asia.
Bennett Coleman and Company Limited is an Indian media conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The company, which is a family-owned business, publishes The Times of India newspaper, which is the highest selling daily English-language newspaper in India, in addition to several radio stations, television channels such as Times Now, the film magazine Filmfare, and the women's magazine Femina. The Sahu Jain family continues to own a majority of the stake in the group, and in May 2023, the Times Group was split into two separate business entities between brothers Vineet Jain and Samir Jain, such that its radio and broadcast properties would remain with Vineet Jain and its print properties would be under Samir Jain.
The Economic Times is an Indian English-language business-focused daily newspaper. It is owned by The Times Group. The Economic Times began publication in 1961. As of 2023, it is the world's second-most widely read English-language business newspaper, after The Wall Street Journal, with a readership of over 900,000. It is published simultaneously from 14 cities: Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Chandigarh, Pune, Indore, and Bhopal. Its main content is based on the Indian economy, international finance, share prices, prices of commodities as well as other matters related to finance. This newspaper is published by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. The founding editor of the paper when it was launched in 1961 was P. S. Hariharan. The current editor of The Economic Times is Bodhisattva Ganguli.
Filmfare is an Indian English-language fortnightly magazine published by Worldwide Media. Acknowledged as one of India's most popular entertainment magazines, it publishes pieces involving news, interviews, photos, videos, reviews, events, and style. The magazine also annually gives the Filmfare Awards, the Filmfare Awards South, the Filmfare Awards East, the Filmfare Marathi Awards, the Filmfare Awards Punjabi, the Filmfare Awards Bangla, the Filmfare OTT Awards, the Filmfare Short Film Awards and the Filmfare Style & Glamour Awards.
The Statesman is an Indian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper founded in 1818 and published simultaneously in Kolkata, New Delhi, Siliguri and Bhubaneswar. It incorporates and is directly descended from The Friend of India. It is owned by The Statesman Ltd and headquartered at Statesman House, Chowringhee Square, Kolkata, with its national editorial office at Statesman House, Connaught Place, New Delhi. It is a member of the Asia News Network.
Mumbai Mirror was an English-language newspaper that was initially launched in 2005 by the Times Group as part of a ringfencing tactic to fight emerging competition in the city, mainly from Zee–Bhaskar's then joint newspaper, Daily News and Analysis. Mumbai Mirror was downsized and digitised by its owners at The Times Group on 5 December 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown.
The New Indian Express is an Indian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper published by the Chennai-based Express Publications. It was founded in 1932 as The Indian Express, under the ownership of Chennai-based P. Varadarajulu Naidu and was bought by Ramnath Goenka from the monies of capitalists partner Raja Mohan Prasad and is held in trust by the current legal heirs for the family of Raja Mohan Prasad as per the trust deed given by Ramnath Goenka to Raja Mohan Prasad. In 1991, following the death of owner Ramnath Goenka, his family split the group into two companies. Initially, the two groups shared the Indian Express title, as well as editorial and other resources. But on 13 August 1999, the northern editions, headquartered in Mumbai, retained the Indian Express moniker, while the southern editions became The New Indian Express.
Navbharat Times is a Hindi newspaper distributed in Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow and Kanpur. It is from the stable of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd (BCCL), which also publishes other dailies including The Times of India, The Economic Times, Maharashtra Times and also magazines such as Filmfare and Femina. NBT is one of the oldest product of the BCCL group.
Indu Jain was an Indian media executive and philanthropist. She belonged to the Sahu Jain family and was the chairperson of India's largest media group, popularly known as The Times Group.
The Sahu Jain family is an industrial family of India. They own Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., which owns The Times of India, the most-circulated English-language newspaper in the world. The members of the extended family have interests in education, chemicals and finance.
Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain was an Indian industrialist and philanthropist. He was the son-in-law of Ramkrishna Dalmia and former chairman of Bennett, Coleman. His family, Sahu Jains, owns the Times of India newspaper group.
Samir Jain is an Indian publisher and the Vice-Chairman and Managing Director (VCMD) of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., also known as The Times Group, a leading media conglomerate with its primary base of operations in India, which publishes The Times of India and has many other interests. Jain belongs to the Sahu Jain family, an industrialist family of India.
Sahu Shreyans Prasad Jain (1908–1992) was an Indian businessman, parliamentarian and a prominent member of the Jain community. He was the brother of notable businessman and philanthropist Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain. He was awarded Padma Bhushan for social work in 1988.
Navshakti is a Marathi newspaper based in Mumbai, India. The newspaper has a circulation of 83,910 across the state of Maharashtra. This paper was started by S. Sadanand. P. R. Behere was its first editor.
Ei Samay Sangbadpatra is a Bengali-language daily newspaper from The Times Group. It was launched as a broadsheet daily newspaper with a motive to enter into a head-to-head competition with Anandabazar Patrika. It is owned and published by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. which is owned by the Sahu Jain family. At present it is owen by Tidings Media & Communications Pvt Ltd.
Ashok Jain was the Chairman of Bennett, Coleman & Co., the parent company of The Times of India and other large newspapers.
Vineet Jain is an Indian entrepreneur and current Managing Director of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Limited, India’s oldest and largest media group in India, also known as Times Group. The Times Group is present across the media spectrum with a presence in Print, TV, Internet, Radio, Events and OOH. The Times Group has a legacy of 180+ years and publishes leading Indian general and business newspapers – The Times of India and The Economic Times.
In India, paid news is the practice of cash payment or equivalent to journalists and media organizations by individuals and organizations so as to appear in their news articles and to "ensure sustained positive coverage". This practice started in the 1950s and has become a widespread organized activity in India through formal contracts and "private treaties". Pioneered by Bennett, Coleman & Company, Ltd. (B.C.C.L.) group through their Times of India publication and widely adopted by groups such as The Hindustan Times, Outlook and others, the practice was brought to Western media attention in 2010. Paid news financially benefits the "individual journalists and specific media organizations" such as newspapers, magazines and television channels according to a 2010 investigative report of the Press Council of India. It is paid for by politicians, organizations, brands, movies and celebrities who seek to improve their public image, increase favorable coverage and suppress unfavorable information.
Dalmia Bharat Limited (DBL) is an Indian conglomerate, which traces its origins to the businesses established by brothers Ramkrishna Dalmia and Jaidayal Dalmia in eastern India in the first half of the 20th century. In the 1930s, the group merged with the businesses of the Jain family to form the Dalmia-Jain Group. In 1948, the two families decided to split the businesses; the Dalmia businesses were further divided between Ramkrishna and Jaidayal.
Pradeep Guha, also known as PG was an Indian media personality, advertising professional and film producer. He is best known for his work at Bennett, Coleman and Company (BCCL), the publisher of The Times of India, where he served for almost three decades (1976-2005) and transformed the flagship newspaper and magazine brands such as Filmfare and Femina. He also served as CEO of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, and managing director of 9X Media Private Limited. He was credited with introducing several innovative practices in the Indian media industry. He was also known for producing films such as Fiza (2000) and Phir Kabhi (2008).