[9] Republic TV has been accused of practicing biased reporting in favour of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); it has broadcast misinformation and Islamophobic rhetoric on multiple occasions.
[27][28] The Wire and Newslaundry had come across an internal memo floated by Chandrasekhar's group that asked for selective recruitment of right-of-center pro-military voices, who were conducive to his ideology.
Chief Business Officer of Reliance Broadcast Network Vikas Khanchandani, who had earlier stints as Senior Vice President of NDTV, was made the CEO[30] and co-founder of The News Minute, Chitra Subramaniam was appointed as the editorial adviser.
[31] Others who joined included senior anchor of Thanthi TV S. A. Hariharan, retired army officer and television personality Gaurav Arya,[32] former chief correspondent from Jammu and Kashmir for Times Now Aditya Raj Kaul, writer and founder-editor of Gentleman, Minhaz Merchant[33] and actor Anupam Kher.
[39] In May 2017, parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor filed a civil defamation case in the Delhi High Court against Goswami and Republic TV in connection with the channel's broadcast of news items from 8 to 13 May claiming him to be involved in his wife Sunanda Pushkar's unnatural death.
"[42][needs update] In May 2017, Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL) lodged a complaint against Goswami and Prema Sridevi, a journalist with Republic TV, under the Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act, 2000 accusing them of copyright infringement.
Alongside IP infringement, the complaint also alleged the commission of offenses of theft, criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of property, on the two, on multiple occasions days after the channel's launch.
[44][45][needs update] In 2018, News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) [46] demanded Republic TV to tender a full-screen apology for use of multiple objectionable words to describe a group of people at a political rally, who were harassing one of his journalists.
[47] Republic TV "removed the video from its website and YouTube account" after receiving the complaint[48][49] but refused to comply with the NBSA order, instead filing an appeal.
[47] Around a year later, it once again asked Republic TV to broadcast a public apology, after the channel declined to cooperate in another case accusing it of violating the standard prohibitions on racial and religious stereotyping, and instead commented on the body being engaged in "intense pseudo-judicial oversight".
[51] Two weeks after, Goswami along with other media-personas formed the National Broadcasting Federation (NBF) as a new regulatory body; this has since nulled the authority of NBSA to regulate Republic TV.
[55][56] The complainants, NBA also sought from the Broadcast Audience Research Council that it withhold publishing viewership data for Republic until its unfair practices stopped.
[57] The police allege that the channel inflated its ratings by bribing low-income individuals, including people who did not comprehend English, to keep their televisions tuned to Republic TV; logs of WhatsApp chats between Goswami and the former chief executive of Broadcast Audience Research Council (the agency responsible for measuring TRP) were published to provide further evidence of collusion.
[27] The News Broadcasters Association (NBA) subsequently lodged a complaint with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India accusing the group of using unethical tactics for high viewership.
In a typical program, from 2017, Goswami mentioned a law mandating that movie theatres play the national anthem, and asked whether people should be required to stand; his guest Waris Pathan, a Muslim assemblyman, argued that it should be a matter of choice.
The channel has been noted for its right-wing[8] opinionated reporting[84] in support of BJP[85] and Hindutva across a wide spectrum of situations,[86][87] including by presenting political opponents in a negative light and avoiding criticism of figures from ruling parties.
[12][98][99][100] Using post-truth discourse, Republic TV has sparked communal tensions by broadcasting Islamophobic rhetoric, including the love jihad conspiracy theory.
[111] Historian Ramachandra Guha notes it to be a pro-government channel, which ignored issues of joblessness, agrarian distress et al. and instead took to demonizing Pakistan along with opposition parties, furthering religious bigotry in the process.