By Nanditha S
On 15 October 2026, Republic TV reporters were ejected from a joint press conference at the Press Club of India in Delhi. The briefing, organised by Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) with Left student and political representatives including AISA President Neha Bora and CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, addressed the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, demands for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, restrictions on protests at Jantar Mantar, and the detention of CJP leaders. Instead of covering these issues, Republic’s crew turned the room into an extension of its studio shouting matches.
They did not ask questions in turn. From the moment speakers began, they interrupted repeatedly, shouting out of turn and refusing requests to settle down. Neha Bora openly criticised the importation of “studio tactics” into a live briefing. When the disruptions continued, organisers and fellow journalists physically removed the crew. Republic’s subsequent online defence—that its reporters were merely pressing “tough questions” about a “Bangladesh model” and an alleged assault on a female police officer—reads as after-the-fact rationalisation. Tough questions do not require drowning out every other voice. They require listening long enough to understand the claims, then challenging them with evidence and precision. What occurred on 15 October was disruption for its own sake, followed by a victimhood narrative.
This episode is not an isolated lapse. It is the operating model of what has come to be called “godi media.” Channels in this category have inverted the basic duties of journalism. The first duty is to the audience: to report what happened, what was said, and what evidence supports or contradicts it. The second is to power of every kind—government, opposition, civil society, corporations—holding each to the same standard. Republic has spent years subordinating both duties to a third priority: pleasing the current administration and amplifying its preferred narratives. When a platform associated with critics of that administration holds a briefing, the channel’s response is not coverage but confrontation. The goal is not illumination; it is to prevent the event from proceeding on the organisers’ terms and then to claim martyrdom.
Journalistic ethics are not optional professional courtesies. They exist because media institutions occupy a privileged position in public life. They receive access, attention, and legal protections precisely because they are expected to act as independent recorders and questioners, not as combatants for one side. Disrupting a press conference so that no one else can speak is not questioning power; it is denying others the chance to exercise the same right. Refusing to yield the floor after being asked is not toughness; it is contempt for the norms that make collective inquiry possible. When such behaviour on 15 October is followed by selective framing that ignores the subjects under discussion—electoral integrity, protest rights, detentions—and substitutes unrelated talking points, the public is left with propaganda dressed as news.
The deeper cost is cumulative. Each such incident trains audiences to expect noise rather than substance and trains other journalists to anticipate bad faith. It also gives authorities and their allies an easy template: any critical coverage can be dismissed as “disruption” or “bias,” while compliant channels receive unimpeded access. Over time, the distinction between reporting and advocacy collapses for everyone. Media that exist primarily to please an administration cease to function as a check on it. They become an extension of it—louder, more theatrical, but no less dependent.
Republic TV’s removal from the Press Club on 15 October 2026 was the result of its own choices, not an attack on the press. The real damage was already done before anyone was pushed out the door: the decision to treat a public briefing as an opportunity for spectacle rather than scrutiny. Journalism’s duty is not to win the room or to protect a political brand. It is to let the public hear what was said, weigh the evidence, and judge for itself. Channels that abandon that duty in favour of serving power do not merely fail their audience. They accelerate the erosion of the very space in which independent reporting can still occur.