Corporate Accountability in India: When Business Media Cannot Be the Watchdog
India's business media has a fundamental conflict of interest when it comes to corporate accountability. The companies that commit fraud, violate regulations, or harm consumers are often the same companies that spend crores on advertising in business publications. When Byju's was collapsing, the scale of coverage varied dramatically between outlets that had advertising relationships with the edtech giant and those that did not. When Adani Group faced the Hindenburg report, the response from Network18 — owned by Adani — was starkly different from independent outlets.
This is not about vilifying business media. Economic Times, Business Standard, Mint, and Moneycontrol all produce valuable financial journalism. But their revenue models create blind spots, and those blind spots tend to align precisely with the stories that matter most to investors, employees, and consumers — the stories of corporate misconduct.
The Patterns of Corporate Misconduct in India
India's corporate accountability challenges span every sector:
- Financial fraud — From the Satyam scandal (2009) to the DHFL collapse (2019) to recent fintech failures, India has seen repeated cases of accounting manipulation, fund diversion, and promoter fraud that destroyed shareholder value
- Regulatory violations — SEBI enforcement actions against insider trading, market manipulation, and disclosure failures are routine but receive inconsistent media coverage depending on the company involved
- Consumer harm — Product safety issues, misleading advertising, and data privacy violations by major corporations are underreported relative to their impact
- Labour exploitation — Factory safety violations, gig worker exploitation, and illegal termination practices receive media attention only when they result in deaths or strikes
SEBI processed over 600 enforcement cases in 2023-24 alone, yet most received minimal media attention. The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission handles thousands of cases annually that expose corporate malpractice — data that business media rarely covers systematically.
AI-Powered Corporate Watchdog
The Corporate Accountability feed uses The Balanced News's AI to flag stories triggering financial irregularity, abuse of power, and systemic failure indicators in the corporate domain. When a SEBI order penalizes a listed company, when a consumer court rules against a major brand, or when an audit reveals discrepancies in a promoter's dealings, the AI surfaces it — regardless of whether the company in question is an advertiser with any particular media outlet. This automated detection bypasses the advertising-driven editorial filters that constrain traditional business media coverage of corporate misconduct.
