BBC India launches Collective Newsroom

With the establishment of Collective Newsroom, an independent organization; the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) concluded the restructuring of its operations in India in order to comply with India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) regulations.

The Indian-owned company replaces BBC World Service India to continue to provide language-based content. BBC will keep its news staff in India as part of the reorganization for its English-language digital, television, and radio channels with their headquarters located in London.

This development comes after BBC premises in India facing “surveys” by tax authorities and an ensuing investigation by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over alleged FDI violations earlier in 2023.

“I’m thrilled that Collective Newsroom has officially launched with a clear, ambitious mission to create the most credible, creative and courageous journalism, and with a wealth of experience and talent in our incredible teams,” said Rupa Jha, CEO, Collective Newsroom.

“Audiences will quickly come to know Collective Newsroom as an independent news organisation that leads with the facts, works in the public interest and hears from diverse voices and perspectives,” she said.

The announcement of this new entity was done in December last year. Collective Newsroom will create programmes and content for BBC as its first client. It will also be available to create content for other news providers across India and around the globe.

“We exist to serve Indian audiences with innovative and impactful journalism and to cover stories for a global audience. Collective Newsroom is ambitious in scale and editorial output and will deliver premium quality content for our customers across India,” it said in a statement.

Jha is joined by fellow directors and former BBC staffers Mukesh Sharma, Sanjoy Majumder and Sara Hasan, who have a contract with the BBC to produce content for BBC News Hindi, the BBC’s language service with the largest audience. It will also create and publish journalism for BBC News in six Indian languages: Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu, as well as in English for the BBC News India YouTube channel, and produce other English content.