Killer Ratings: Has a Brazilian TV host arranged murders to reinforce his show? | Television and radio

Sbadert that in a future Line of Duty season, The revelation turned out to be that the organized crime syndicate had used murderers to kill drug dealers in a plot with a Crimewatch presenter to increase the ratings of the show.. Social media would surely be filled with shark jumping memes. Still, it is possible that such an absurd sequence of events actually occurred in Brazil. This strange story is the subject of Killer Ratings, an amazing documentary series that has just hit Netflix.

In Britain, at the time of ethical panic over the ethics of television, one can find an even more extreme example in the story of Wallace Souza, host of Amazonas Book Cbad, a state of northwestern Brazil.

Souza's television presenter was "the public defender". There is a pious flavor recognizable in a clip where he confronts a criminal, live, with the accusation: "You murdered a citizen in front of a child". Another highlight of Souza's film was a sequence in which hidden gangsters are in agreement. negotiate in person only with the TV star. They took him hostage, but the public defender said he was free just in time to come to the studio to tell his ordeal.

Because the rules of editorial impartiality seem less strict for Brazilian broadcasters than British (where Martin Bell had to leave the BBC to become a deputy) or American (where Donald Trump gave up the Apprentice as president), Souza was able to both present his show and be elected three times, with increasingly overwhelming majorities, as a member of the National Assembly. On this platform, he criticized the police and judges for their inability to impose justice as fiercely as on television, where Cbad Book became increasingly lucrative for its channel, Rio Negro TV, proposing "exclusive" solutions to executions related to the war on drugs. the police had not yet managed to investigate.

Imagine a Brazilian combination of David Attenborough, Sherlock Holmes, and Barack Obama, and Souza appeared to have become so in 2009. However, as a result of the plea-bargaining confessions made by a scammer arrested in a separate case, it was alleged that Cbad Livre arrived so quickly on the sites and perpetrators of the crimes it covered because they had arranged for these crimes to be committed. Although convincing evidence was found at the home of the presenter-politician, he insisted that he was accused by ministers and police chiefs outraged by the revelations of his program.

Without spoiling the plot, the public should be warned that true stories can not always be solved as clearly as fiction; a sudden event (easily detectable by Google, although those who have an aversion to spoilers will want to stay out of the way) in this case prevents complete closure. However, this uncertainty has the effect of turning viewers into jurors, as is often the case with the crime of real life.

Although British and American television have not seen such serious ethical violations as Souza was accused of, Netflix's seven-part series serves as a parable for all broadcasters.

Noting journalistic misconduct vis-à-vis the government, the police, the social welfare system and the judiciary, Souza seems to have gradually badumed his functions, becoming both a populist demagogue and a police force control officer. # 39; s order. One of the consequences of the allegedly sponsored murders and their quick fixes was to showcase his show, but another was to reduce the number of criminals on the streets, which could have been given as a mistaken justification for the murders.

Without ever going that far, the British media sometimes became impatient at the slowness of the judicial process, especially in 2010 when they more or less condemned a Bristol teacher, Christopher Jeffries, for a murder of which he was perfectly innocent. And regardless of the cause-and-effect relationship between The Jeremy Kyle Show and the death of a guest, Kyle and other such formats are clearly exposed to the power of turning a studio into a police cell or court. We can also name all political presenters who give the impression that they know how to better manage the country than those who do it.

Some claim that British television is over-regulated, but Killer Ratings, a breathtaking story told to us in a compelling way, can make us grateful that barriers prevent broadcasters from becoming politicians, cops, judges or jurors .

• Killer Ratings is on Netflix now