So You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too or Who Entitled a Comedy Show Reporter to Act as an Investigative Journalist

“The Masters of Broadcast is a Bulgarian TV blunders comedy show. Its executive producer is Global Vision” – from the official Wikipedia article on the most talked about these days TV production.

The show is on everyone’s lips because of the monstrous gaffe of one of its most active reporters – their correspondent in the town of Veliko Turnovo. He was unscrupulous enough to film simulated assault and battery against himself, and thus he managed to dupe not just the naïve audience, but also top government institutions such as the Chief Prosecutor and the Prime Minister. However, the fabricated news of the battered Vurbanov is not the most bothersome issue surrounding the case.

Public attention should focus on another detail – who let a “TV blunders comedy show” assume the role of a ‘pillar of morality’ before the audience and to seriously lay claim to the function of an alternative supreme authority in all matters pertaining to law and order?

For years already, the self-professed advocates of righteousness spurt out, evening after evening, their allegedly serious journalistic investigations, painted pretty by experienced cutters and sound engineers with laugh tracks, exclamations, colourful banners and catchy small tunes. The cherry on top of the cake are the sickly-sweet, appreciative letters by grateful viewers, which the “absolute favourites” (Zueka and Rachkov, usually) read out ecstatically.

If such a comedy show is the nation’s last hope for justice; if it is considered of adequate expertise to solve problems and expose criminal schemes, it should come as no surprise that an ordinary reporter in an ill-fitting suit has decided to manipulate the crowd at will.

The blame does not lie with Dimitur Vurbanov. It should besought in the offices of all those producers and top TV managers who generously gave him the chance – and the means – to play pretend police man, prosecutor and judge before the audience.

Judging by the aftermath, it turns out that you can have your cake and eat it, too.

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