On first day, first show for DD, Sudhir Chaudhary runs old, unrelated videos as Indian air defence foiling Pak attacks

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‘Star’ anchor Sudhir Chaudhary began his stint at public broadcaster Doordarshan with a bang, just as he had done three years ago when he joined Aaj Tak.

Keeping his unenviable track record of sharing false information on the first day, first show intact, Chaudhary showed old, unrelated videos as footage of India’s air defence system destroying Pakistani jets, in his debut show for DD News on May 15, 2025. In his earlier avatar, as the host of the Aaj Tak programme ‘Black & White’, Chaudhary had misattributed a quote to Mark Twain in the very first episode aired on July 19, 2022.

In March this year, the Indian Express reported that Prasar Bharati had inked a Rs 15-crore annual deal with Chaudhary to host a one-hour segment on Doordarshan on weekdays starting mid-May. A teaser for the show, titled ‘Decode’, shared by DD News on X shows Chaudhary saying that the truth is often kept under lock and key; he would decode it for viewers.

Chaudhary’s show ‘Decode’ premiered on the state-run Hindi news channel at 9 pm on May 15.

The first episode of ‘Decode’ focused on the India-Pakistan conflict. At the 15.25-minute mark in the show, Chaudhary showed some footage of missiles hitting targets on ground while observing that the three wings of the Indian armed forces, the Army, the Air Force and the Indian Navy, had already cornered Pakistan. Readers can watch the relevant part here:

Here is a screengrab from the moment:

The footage shows in this segment has no connection with the recent India-Pakistan conflict. Several social media users had shared the same video on May 7 with false claims. In a fact check published on the same day, Alt News explained that the footage was of Iranian missiles targeting the Nevatim airbase in Israel’s Negev desert in early October, 2024. In fact, the same video is available on the YouTube channel of DD India. It was uploaded on October 2, 2024. The caption says, “Iranian missiles targeting the Nevatim airbase in the Negev Desert.”

To sum up, Sudhir Chaudhary, on his first show on DD News, showed a video claiming it was from the India-Pakistan conflict. The same video is available on DD India’s YouTube channel since October 2024 as an Iranian attack on Israel. 

That’s not all.

Again, around the 26:48-minute mark of the show, Chaudhary said, “जब पाकिस्तान ने भारत के अलग-अलग शहरों पर और एयरबेसेज पर हमला किया, तब ये हमले एयर डिफेंस सिस्टम की मदद से हमने नाकाम कर दिए. इनमें दो एयर डिफेंस सिस्टम्स हमने रशिया से खरीदे थे और एक एयर डिफेंस सिस्टम मेड इन इंडिया है, और उसका नाम है आकाशतीर…” (When Pakistan attacked various Indian cities and airbases, we thwarted those attacks with the help of our air defence systems. Two of these air defence systems were bought from Russia while one, called Akashteer, was made in India.) Through the 20-second duration where he said this, visuals of an aerial combat against the night sky played on screen. Watch here:

This clip, too, has no connection with the India-Pakistan conflict.

At the height of the conflict, the same clip was aired by several channels, including, Aaj Tak, NDTV, Times Now, News18, Times Now Navbharat, ABP News, One India, News Nation, and India TV, as visuals of an aerial fight over Jaisalmer, in which Indian air defence systems foiled an attack by Pakistan.

In a Hindi fact-check report published on May 9 (published in English on May 12), a week before Chaudhary’s show, Alt News explained that the footage had no connection to the India-Pakistan conflict. The viral video has been on the internet since at least 2021. It was uploaded by NSFchannel on YouTube on May 11, 2021, with a caption saying that it showed Israel’s air defense system, the Iron Dome, in action.

Interestingly, viewers who watch the first episode of ‘Decode’ (dated May 15) on YouTube now will not find the above section. After careful viewing, it becomes clear that the problematic part has been removed. Chaudhary’s lines in that bit sound like this now: “जैसे-जैसे समय बढ़ रहा है, इस युद्ध की नई-नई डिटेल्स सामने आ रहा है… मेड इन इंडिया है, और इसका नाम है आकाशतीर” (As time goes on, more details about the conflict emerge. Is made in India and is called Akashteer). It is evident that the part before ‘मेड इन इंडिया’ has been clipped out.

Watch from the 26:40-minute mark here:

Clipping the video, however, did not close the chapter. As luck would have it, a follower of Chaudhary who wanted to express her pleasure at him joining her ‘favourite’ channel, posted a recording of ‘Decode’ playing on her television on X. This recording showed exactly the part that has now been removed—the three-year-old, unrelated visual from Israel linked to the India-Pakistan conflict. “… We missed the credible news during war,” she wrote.

Chaudhury shared her post and thanked her for watching his show.

‘A Lie can Travel Halfway Around the World while the Truth is Still Putting on its Shoes’

Sudhir Chaudhary joined the India Today group’s Hindi channel Aaj Tak as consulting editor in July 2022, after stepping down as the CEO of Zee Media.

On July 19, ‘Black & White’ premiered on Aaj Tak with Chaudhary as the host. In the first episode, while referring to a rumour that was circulated regarding the Indian Army’s Agnipath scheme, Chaudhary claimed that American author Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

Alt News had shown in a fact-check report that the quote is often wrongly attributed to Mark Twain. A 2017 New York Times article outlined how the misquotation likely began. “Commonly attributed to Mark Twain, that quotation instead appears to be a descendant of a line published centuries ago by the satirist Jonathan Swift. Variants emerged and mutated over time…,” the NYT article said.

The X (then Twitter) handle of BBC TV show QI, too, pointed out in 2019 that the line had been incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and Thomas Jefferson.

Decoding Sudhir Chaudhary’s Journalism: Problems Aplenty

Over the years, Alt News has fact-checked misreports by Sudhir Chaudhary several times. In June 2019, on his show Daily News and Analysis (DNA), Chaudhary misreported that Trinamool leader Mahua Moitra had plagiarized her maiden Parliament speech in which she spoke about 12 early warning signs of fascism.

In September 2018, Chaudhary broadcast a bulletin on DNA regarding the Kathua case. It was titled, “देखें, गैंगरेप पीड़ित के नाम पर लाखों का चंदा जमा करने का खेल| (Watch, the game of collecting Lakhs of funds in the name of a gang-rape victim).” On his show, he declared that “In the name of helping the parents of the child, lakhs were collected from across the nation. However, the family received no help.” The report was entirely false. Readers can access Alt News’s detailed fact-check report here.

Again, in May 2020, an FIR was filed against Chaudhary over controversial remarks made by him on DNA. On the March 11 episode of the show, he indulged in a five-minute discourse on “different types of jihad”. “Today we have a diagram about jihad which I want read out to you so that you can understand what the conspiracy is,” Chaudhary said and then went on to describe ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Jihad in detail. With the help of the diagram, he explained terms such as ‘History Jihad’, ‘Media Jihad’, ‘Love Jihad’, ‘Movie Jihad’, ‘Population Jihad’, ‘Land Jihad’, etc. An Alt News report showed that the channel had plagiarized the chart from a dodgy Facebook page.

In September 2021, then Zee News editor-in-chief Sudhir Chaudhary shared a 12-second video of farmer leader Rakesh Tikait on X and wrote, “Rakesh Tikait’s next target are media houses. Zee News showed the truth, so does that mean he can threaten us? Or else what?” An Alt News fact check proved that a small portion of a statement by Tikait was shared out of context with the false claim that he threatened the media. In reality, he had said that the government’s next target was the media.

In February this year, the News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDSA) asked Aaj Tak to remove an entire episode of its prime-time show ‘Black & White’ aired on April 19, 2023, anchored by Chaudhary, which it found, had violated the dignity of the LGBTQIA+ community by failing to maintain neutrality, impartiality, and adherence to guidelines on the prevention of hate speech. In what one might consider an act of dog-whistling against same-sex couples, Chaudhary asked his viewers to imagine their son marrying a man or their daughter marrying a woman, emphasizing the shock such a situation might cause. Sudhir Chaudhary described a same-sex marriage as a “big shock” (bada jhatka) and questioned how traditional wedding rituals in Hindu, Muslim, and Christian marriages would apply to such unions.

At one point in the show, the air of homophobia and stereotyping hit an unprecedented high (or low) when the screen displayed an image of a person half dressed as a man and the half as a woman. With a smirk on his face, Chaudhary quipped, “In this image, you would be able to see both your son-in-law and daughter-in-law”.

This was not the first time the Chaudhary was ticked off by NBDSA. In March 2024, the broadcast watchdog imposed a fine of Rs 75,000 on Aaj Tak for violating principles of objectivity and neutrality in a broadcast criticising a statement by former US President Barack Obama. Reporting on certain remarks by Barack Obama, Chaudhary, on his show Black & White, used phrases such as “tukde tukde gang”, “Khalistani” and “Pakistani supporters”. “There would have been no issue with the impugned had the anchor confined its analysis only to reporting the statement made by Mr Obama or criticising it. However, in the impugned broadcast, while doing so the anchor went totally stringent and overboard by bringing in a totally unconnected narrative,” the NBDSA order said, slamming Chaudhary.

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