Sudhir Chaudhary is an Indian

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

, and media personality. He is currently working at Hindi news channel,

Aaj Tak ''Aaj Tak'' () is an Indian Hindi-language news channel owned by TV Today Network, part of the New Delhi-based media conglomerate Living Media group (India Today Group) Aaj Tak HD On 14 December 2018, Aaj Tak launched India's first Hindi h ...

as Consulting Editor and hosting it's flagship prime-time show ''Black & White'' (''B & W''). He was formerly the editor-in-chief and CEO of

Zee News Zee News is an Indian Hindi-language news channel owned by Subhash Chandra's Essel Group. It launched on 27 August 1999 and is the flagship channel of the Zee Media Corporation. The channel has been involved in several controversies and has ...

WION WION (World is One News) is an Indian multinational English language news channel headquartered in New Delhi. It is owned by the Essel Group and is part of the Zee Media network of channels. The channel covers global news and current affairs. ...

Zee Business ''Zee Media Corporation Limited'' (abbreviated as ZMCL; formerly Zee News Limited) is the news broadcasting company of the Essel Group which is controlled by Subhash Chandra. The company is engaged mainly in the business of broadcasting of news ...

Zee 24 Taas ''Zee Media Corporation Limited'' (abbreviated as ZMCL; formerly Zee News Limited) is the news broadcasting company of the Essel Group which is controlled by Subhash Chandra. The company is engaged mainly in the business of broadcasting of new ...

and hosted the prime-time show ''Daily News & Analysis'' (''DNA'') on Zee News.

Career

Chaudhary has been working in the television news industry since the 1990s. Belonging to the first generation of television journalists, he was in

live television Live television is a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. In a secondary meaning, it may refer to streaming television over the Internet when content or programming is played continuously (not on demand) ...

reporting and then 24 hours news television. Chaudhary was told to have been in the squad which has covered the Vajpayee–

Musharraf General Pervez Musharraf ( ur, , Parvez Muśharraf; born 11 August 1943) is a former Pakistani politician and four-star general of the Pakistan Army who became the tenth president of Pakistan after the successful military takeover of the ...

Indo-Pak meeting at

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital T ...

, after the 2001 Indian Parliament attack. In 2003, he left

. He was instrumental in the launch of

Sahara Samay Sahara India Pariwar (''pariwar'' being Hindi for "family") is an Indian conglomerate headquartered in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. The group operates business sectors such as finance, infrastructure & housing, real estate, sports, power, ma ...

, the

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

-language news channel of the

Sahara group Sahara India Pariwar (''pariwar'' being Hindi for "family") is an Indian conglomerate headquartered in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. The group operates business sectors such as finance, infrastructure & housing, real estate, sports, power, ma ...

. He also joined

India TV India TV is a Hindi news channel based in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. The channel was launched on 20 May 2004 by Rajat Sharma and wife Ritu Dhawan. The channel is a subsidiary of Independent News Service, which was co-founded by Sharma and Dha ...

for a brief time. In 2012, he rejoined Zee News, where he hosts the news show ''Daily News & Analysis'' (''DNA''). Chaudhary resigned again from Zee News in July 2022 and joined

. He is hosting Aaj Tak's prime time show ''Black & White'' (''B & W'').

Lawsuits

Jindal extortion case

In November 2012, Chaudhary and his colleague Sameer Ahluwalia were arrested on charges of extortion after businessman

Naveen Jindal Naveen Jindal (born 9 March 1970) is an Indian billionaire industrialist, and a former Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Kurukshetra, Haryana in the 14th and 15th Lok Sabha. He currently serves as the Chairman of Jindal Steel and Powe ...

alleged that the two journalists had tried to extort Crore worth of advertisements from his company in exchange for dropping stories that linked the Jindal Group with the Coalgate scam. The two were sent to 14-day judicial custody in

Tihar Jail Tihar Prisons, also called Tihar Jail and Tihar Ashram, is a prison complex in India and the largest complex of prisons in South Asia. Run by Department of Delhi Prisons, Government of Delhi, the prison contains nine central prisons, and is one ...

but were released on bail. The Broadcast Editors' Association suspended Chaudhary as its treasurer in the wake of these charges, saying that Chaudhary had acted in a manner prejudicial to the interests and objectives of the Association. In July 2018, the Jindal Group wrote to the investigating agencies saying that a settlement had been reached, and requesting them to withdraw the allegations against the journalists and close the case; on the same day, charges of bribery were filed against Jindal and others related to the case.

Allegations against Mahua Moitra

Chaudhary accused Trinamool MP

Mahua Moitra Mahua Moitra (born 12 October 1974) is an Indian politician and a Member of parliament in the 17th Lok Sabha from Krishnanagar, West Bengal. She contested and won the seat in the 2019 Indian general election as an All India Trinamool Congress ...

of plagiarising speech of Truman Longman pointing out early signs of fascism in India while both Longman and Moitra later denied plagiarising the speech.

filed criminal defamation case against Sudhir Chaudhary after which Chaudhary on his daily prime time show accepted that only a part of Mahua Moitra's speech was broadcast and showed his regrets. Zee Media also filed a defamation case against her for calling it 'chor' and 'paid' news.

Accusations of Islamophobia

On 10 April 2020, on Zee News, Chaudhary (according to

Al Jazeera Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera ...

) openly accused Muslims of impeding India's coronavirus war. Chaudhary said on his show ''DNA'' that the "

Tablighi Jamaat Tablighi Jamaat (, also translated as "propagation party" or "preaching party") is a transnational Deobandi Islamic missionary movement that focuses on exhorting Muslims to be more religiously observant and encouraging fellow members t ...

betrayed the nation." In May 2020,

Kerala Police The Kerala Police is the law enforcement agency for the Indian state of Kerala. Kerala Police has its headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital. The motto of the force is "Mridhu Bhave Dhrida Kruthye" which means "Soft in Temperamen ...

filed a

first information report __NOTOC__ A first information report (FIR) is a document prepared by police organisations in Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asian countries including Myanmar, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan when they receive information about the commissio ...

against Chaudhary for his March 11 broadcast of ''DNA'', in which Chaudhary discusses the "types of

jihad Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...

s", which were criticized as Islamophobic.

Threats

In 2015, Sudhir Chaudhary got X-category security after allegations that someone had threatened to murder Chaudhary. In 2020, Zee News claimed that

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

had been monitoring Sudhir Chaudhary.

Awards

Chaudhary won a Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism in the "Hindi broadcast" category for 2013. He won the award for his interview with the friend of the

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

December 16 gang-rape victim.

References

External links

Profile in

Daily News and Analysis Publications established in 2005 Newspapers published in Mumbai English-language newspapers published in India Daily newspapers published in India Essel Group 2005 establishments in Maharashtra ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chaudhary, Sudhir Living people Indian editors Indian male journalists Indian television journalists Indian broadcast news analysts Indian television executives Indian television news anchors Indian television talk show hosts Indian television presenters 20th-century Indian journalists Indian male television journalists Indian political journalists India Today people Indian extortionists Year of birth missing (living people)