Newslaundry contacted IIMC graduates from the batch of 2018, around whom India Today’s story was woven. One of them was Abhinav Pathak, who graduated in 2018 and landed a job through campus placements with ETV Bharat at a monthly salary of ₹18,000. When asked about India Today’s report of average annual salaries of ₹13 lakh, Pathak said: “It is an outright lie. More than half the students did not even get jobs worth ₹20,000 per month. You can calculate how much it comes to annually. There were 60 of us studying Hindi journalism, out of which 25 were hired by ETV for ₹18,000 per month. No one else in my class earned a job which paid more than ₹30,000 monthly.”