MUMBAI: Fifty years in the media business buys you the right to speak bluntly. Aroon Purie exercised that right at Ficci Frames 2025 in Mumbai, delivering a blistering critique of India’s news industry—an ecosystem he says is simultaneously massive, unprofitable and increasingly compromised.
The numbers are staggering. India has over 140,000 registered publications, 375 twenty-four-hour news channels (with more in the pipeline), and a broadcasting industry employing 1.7 million people. Delhi alone wakes up to dozens of English and regional newspapers daily. No other country comes close to this scale. Yet 99 per cent of news channels lose money.
The problem, Purie argues, is structural. India’s news industry runs on what he calls “raddi economics”—newspapers priced so low that readers profit from selling them as scrap. Broadcasters pay cable operators carriage fees just to reach viewers, a practice that persisted even after digitisation. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s price controls strangle market forces, treating cable television like wheat or rice. “The government has made a mess of the broadcasting industry due to lack of foresight and regressive policies,” Purie said.
Worse still is the funding model. With consumers paying next to nothing, advertisers bankroll nearly the entire industry. “When journalism’s survival depends almost entirely on advertising from corporations and governments, its independence is under a constant threat of compromise,” Purie warned. The hand that gives can also take away.
Enter what Purie calls “billionaire news channels”—industrial houses launching news operations not as businesses but as tools for influence and access. They have deep pockets and no profit motive, destroying economic models for legitimate players. “Their entrance makes the public believe that every channel is a mouthpiece for a vested interest,” he said. It’s the only business, Purie noted drily, where the industry loses money yet people queue to enter it.
Digital promised salvation but delivered more of the same. Publishers chased scale and eyeballs, giving content away for free. Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter became the world’s “new editors-in-chief”, controlling distribution and monetisation whilst producing no journalism. They hoover up over 70 per cent of total media revenue—digital advertising now claims 55 per cent of all ad spending—leaving crumbs for actual newsrooms. The algorithm rewards outrage and virality, not depth or accuracy. “Newsrooms that once invested in reporters now have to invest in SEO specialists,” Purie said.
Artificial intelligence poses the next existential threat. AI can scrape, synthesise and regurgitate news without credit or revenue, summarising five articles into one paragraph. “What happens to the original news organisations—the ones who pay reporters and fight court cases—when our content is scraped?” Purie asked. It’s a question the industry is only beginning to grapple with.
Purie, whose India Today Group reaches 750 million viewers, readers and subscribers, doesn’t claim to have all the answers. But he’s clear about the solution’s shape: stop apologising for journalism’s value, innovate business models, and persuade audiences that credible news is a public good with a price. “A subscription is not just a transaction; it’s a vote for the kind of media you want to exist,” he said.
After five decades navigating disruption—from print to television to digital to AI—Purie’s diagnosis is stark. The old models are broken, the new gatekeepers ruthless, and professionally generated content under siege. Yet he remains defiant. “Disruption is not the enemy, it’s the new normal,” he said. “The real question is, do we have the courage, imagination, innovation, resilience and integrity to seize it?”
Whether India’s news industry can answer that question may determine the health of its democracy. No pressure, then.
“At this stage of the growth in the industry the focus on good regulation is critical, and that can be seen in television where digitisation has finally been mandated and will have a huge impact on the top-line of the industry. So this time, this edition has a lot of focus on regulation as against earlier editions,” Vanita expounds.