Corridors of Power: ‘Exclusive’ to all

‘Exclusive’ to allConsidering how television channels endlessly reported every word uttered by leaders big and small during the bypoll campaign, one expected a detailed coverage and analysis on the da

Considering how television channels endlessly reported every word uttered by leaders big and small during the bypoll campaign, one expected a detailed coverage and analysis on the day of results. But surprisingly, that was not to be.

A little past noon, once it was clear that the BJP and the Congress had tied 1-1, all channels, simultaneously and quite miraculously, got “exclusive” video footage of the late actor Puneeth Rajkumar’s last moments before he travelled to the hospital. Bypoll results fell by the wayside, as TV anchors across channels held forth on how fit as a fiddle he looked just minutes before his death.

Which mysterious “source” had supplied the footage just in time so that Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s acute embarrassment of losing a constituency in his home district was camouflaged and viewers’ attention diverted? No prizes for guessing.