Mukesh Ambani addressed the stakeholders and employees of Reliance Jio at a townhall in Mumbai yesterday after its launch in September. As the newly formed technology firm completes its third quarter at the end of this month, the Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited deemed it fit to deliver a presentation on the company’s performance. It’s not unusual for news or business channels to cut to a live speech at any company address assuming the media is allowed to film it) but yesterday’s 1.30 pm to 2 pm slot was exclusively dedicated to Jio throughout the spectrum of news channels. Times Now, NewsX, NDTV 24X7, Aaj Tak, CNN-News18, all played a live telecast of the complete speech, providing no commentary or sifting through the prodigious public relations speak these events entail.

Though it is ‘Jio Jio everywhere’, the dailies have certainly done a better job at ‘reporting’ on the speech than simply broadcasting it in its entirety. Front page stories examine the “Happy New Year offer”—a core point of the townhall—and deemed it a replica of Jio’s initial “Welcome offer” promising free voice calls, data and other features. The Financial Express and Business Standard have carried it as their top story with continued coverage in the subsequent pages. The latter also called it “Ambani’s New Year Gift”.

The Business Standard also carried an editorial by Sheetal Agarwal, “Launch of Jio paid service a key stock catalyst for RIL”. The article discusses the need for Jio to roll out its paid services soon. The telecom company has expectedly extended its free offer to increase its customer base. Agarwal was the only cautious voice in any of the papers:

“Reliance Industries’ move to extend the free services of its telecom venture Reliance Jio till March 31, 2017, was largely on expected lines. This means the capitalisation of Jio’s losses and its break-even will be pushed further forward. Notably, clarity on the monetisation or commercial launch of Jio is a requisite for any re-rating of the RIL stock. Clarity on operational and financial details of Reliance Jio would have helped ascribe a valuation to the company and acted as a big catalyst for RIL stock, says Sanjay Mookim of Bank of America.”

Presenting any meeting as-is serves no purpose other than furthering the agenda of whoever is throwing one, what journalism should do is provide commentary and analysis for those of us who aren’t stakeholders. For instance, Ambani declared India is “on the path to the top 10 digital countries in the world.” But unless he has access to information different from the World Economic Forum’s, we’re ranked 91 in networked readiness.

The Economic Times, however, went all out in reserving a much of its space for Jio. The front page headline of the two-column story read, “Jio’s free data offer to March into next year”. The story directs you to page 17 that dedicates more than half of its page to Ambani with many hailing the free service as unprecedented. What the paper, as well the others, failed to mention was that the Jio’s initial free service was plagued with teething troubles and hardware troubles.

ET also carried a two-column report dedicated solely to the Jio wallet aimed at merchants to use in the wake of demonetisation. The article, “Jio Money to roll out App to help small merchants go digital” only contained snippets from Ambani’s speech and had no comments or analysis on how these e-wallets may function given the inequitable distribution of internet around the country.

Mint had the smallest single column report on the front page. The paper also carried a larger story on the meeting in its corporate section on page 5. The article, however, excerpts parts of the speech and featured analysts who see the extension of the free offer as a smart attempt at retaining Jio’s customer base.

The big four dailies have however, pushed Ambani to the business sections of their papers. The Times of India carried A small snippet on the sidebar of its front page. It served to inform readers that “Jio free run now till March 31” but the main report was in the business section on page 27.

All of them mention the key aspects of Ambani’s speech-the offer, improved call drop rates, Jio money and mobile number portability support and not much else.

While the print media may seem to have done a slightly better job at reporting yesterday’s speech, not one of them seem to have fact checked any of the claims made by Ambani. According to him, Jio has become the fastest growing tech company leaving Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype behind. He also claimed that Jio is the fastest mobile network with highest amount of data usage at a customer’s disposal. A cursory search would easily show that Jio is the fourth fastest network. If the rest of his claims are to be believed, then the big three (Airtel, Vodafone and Idea) have already lost much of their customer base to Jio. With Jio still in its infancy, it seems strange that there is little discussion on it that’s not a simple reiteration of its manufacturer’s claims.