Star News is a 24-hour Hindi news channel, offering its viewers news that is relevant to today`s Indians. The programming of this channel covers the full spectrum of news ranging from politics to business, investigative reports to consumer issues, crime to the environment. Reporting news as it happens in India and with links to international news agencies, STAR NEWS keeps viewers across India fully informed and engaged. Star news channel is also available in Hong Kong, Europe, Middle East, The Philippines and Thailand besides India. With so many channels looking at people as their USP, Star news is also looking at becoming the `people`s channel`. The channel also also broadcast a TV Guide for STAR Plus, STAR News and Channel V India. Star news claims to attract at least 25% of the market shares from the six metro sities in India. The channel has a classy Logo in Blue and silvery white, with a star, cut as a flash of light as its main symbol.

Launched in the year 1998, Star News was previously a bilingual channel when it was in partnership with NDTV, featuring news in both- English as well as Hindi. It became a completely Hindi channel in the year 2003, when the agreement with NDTV expired, which was taken as a good decision by the management as their audiences were those who understand Hindi but prefer to read English. According to research, their viewership gains were likely to be much more than what they would lose. Star News, made a successful transition to a 24-hour Hindi News channel, reaching out to wider audiences across India. The programming genre of Star News consists of Star Savera, Khabar Din Bhar, Aaj ki baat, National reporter, City 60, Kal ki baat and the like. The headquarters of the News Channel is in the Star News Centre, Mumbai, and it is linked to the Sansad Marg Super Bureau in Delhi. The 19 other regional bureaus across India are connected by VSAT. An added unique feature is that the reporters can multitask in shooting, editing and reporting by the use of laptop editing systems to stay connected while on location. In the year 2006, star news launched an interactive news channel Actve STAR News, which is available on the newly launched DTH platform, Tata Sky. This new channel is reportedly a premium version of the channel, Star News and is available on subscription. Besides the regular news feed, the subscribers see an on-screen prompt, which directs them to press a red button on the remote to tune into Actve STAR News.

Star news channel has also been in controversies due to its sting operation. The channel`s `sting operation` against a scholar of Darul-Uloom Deoband, India, produced a report, which on further enquiry turned out to be spurious and defamatory. Star News Channel had broadcast the story in various geographic locations as a sting operation under the name `Be-Naqab` (uncovering). Analysis of the story after the enquiry suggests that the recording was forged! This offence does put a question mark on the Credibility of the reporting standards adopted by Star News journalists and editorial board.