Although a three-person search committee was set up to find a successor to S.S. Gill, acting CEOs have been managing the show. This suits the minister. The acting CEO is both insecure in his job and overburdened with responsibilities. He leaves the field free for the minister to exercise control. That is the design and it works.
Common sense says TV news channels get viewers when they do a professional job.
When they do not, viewers are lost to competing current affairs and news channels. Official newsspeak is a self-defeating exercise because there are fewer and fewer people to hear it. But perhaps good sense is in short supply. That is why a professional approach is not taken even to newsstories which embarrass the government of the day. Swaraj could have chosen a different time to propose a media council for television on the lines of the Press Council.