Stings are to news what sex is to cinema: pointless, more often than not, but sure to catch eyeballs. Eyeballs in television news translate to Television Rating Points, better known as TRP.  TRPs are those contentious numbers that drive the advertisement-generated revenue models of television news.

Sting operations, therefore, are important. If not so much to expose people and practices as to keep the show running. So stings sell, but catching someone red-handed has its risks. You have made an enemy in a world where proximity and access are as important for survival as sting-generated content. So what’s the middle way?

We drew up a list of major stings that Indian television media – both English and Hindi – did in 2014. What we discovered, to put subtly, doesn’t really serve as the best advertisement for stings. The channels examined were India TV, Aaj Tak, Zee, NDTV, CNN IBN and Headlines Today.

News channels went after inconsequential players and people they caught in their hidden cameras were, most of the time, to use a cliché, only pawns in the game.

India TV – which has been stinging incessantly since its inception in 2004 – led the way with the maximum number of sting-ops in 2014. From railway clerks to Vindoo Dara, India TV, it seems, tried pretty hard. Unfortunately for them, none of their attempts quite worked out.  That is, if you don’t count them exposing “nexuses” between railway clerks and touts and between police constables and auto-thieves.

The most prominent of their stings, though, is also the most riveting. It has Vindoo Dara denying any relationship with then Indian cricketer MS Dhoni and his wife, Sakshi Dhoni. India TV aired the sting along with footage of Singh and Sakshi Dhoni sitting next to each other in the audience of a cricket match. So essentially, the point India TV was trying to make is that it had caught Dara lying on camera. What was the need of the hidden camera then? Wouldn’t he have said the same thing if it was not a “sting operation” performed with a visible camera? Maybe, India TV just likes them hidden because the list of paradoxical – or should we say pointless – stings by the channel doesn’t end there.

In another sting called Operation Khaki, India TV’s investigative reporter’s hidden camera captures the Malaviya Nagar Station House Officer (SHO) claiming that Somnath Bharti, the then law minister of Delhi, was interrupting in the police’s work. So what’s wrong with that, you ask? Nothing except that every other news organisation had him saying the exact same thing on record.

Aaj Tak wasn’t very far behind India TV. In one sting-op, the channel caught a Booth-Level Officer and an Assistant Election Returning Officer in Haryana accepting money to let fake voters caste their vote.

In another, Aaj Tak’s camera caught a few Delhi Police constables, Sub Inspector (SI) and an SHO accepting bribe.

In yet another, its cameras captured officials of the Delhi transport department and Delhi Jal Board accepting bribe.

It is heartening to know that corruption in the police and government goes up only so far in hierarchy. Or are hidden cameras only equipped to catch small fry?

Also, Aaj Tak in another sting proved to us what none of us ever suspected: that insurance agents are not exactly truthful in their claims of “doubling our money in less than a year”.

The channel’s “Operation Dhoni”, though, was quite formidable. It had MS Dhoni’s manager Arun Pandey claiming that Gurunath Meryappan, son-in law of former Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) president N Srinivasan ran the Chennai Super Kings franchise in the Indian Premier League.

Following the Uber rape in December, Zee News, very imaginatively, stung an Uber driver on a hidden camera. What did they find out? That it is not difficult to land a driver’s job in Uber. Did we really need to make a scapegoat out of a poor driver to prove that?

The channel too, like India TV, also exposed the “nexus” between railway clerks and touts.

The English channels too stuck to smaller fish, but they did a marginally better job. Also, they were more judicious.

Safe NDTV, which is not really known for its sting, sought to expose links between the pharmaceutical industry and doctors. Although well known, the story could still have been great had it managed to indict some big names. Instead, they chose to pick on doctors with dingy clinics who wanted iPhones for their kids.

CNN-IBN, for all the flak it has received this year, did a fairly robust sting piece on swine flu infected-chicken being sold in Delhi’s markets. Though it didn’t indict anyone big, it was a good story for the local administration to follow up on.

News X too did a good piece on acid being readily available in Delhi’s markets in spite of a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting its sale without the furnishing of identity proof. It was a story that Delhi’s cops would do well to take seriously.

Times Now didn’t sting. Arnab Goswami did – sting, punch and hammer – but there was nothing covert about it.

Stings, its proponents say, may be unethical, but for a good story the end always justifies the means. And a good investigative story has substantial fall-outs. The sacking of small-time railway clerk doesn’t really count.

Research by Abu Maroof