How “TSN” went but didn’t land on birthday event of Kiev Pechersk Lavra superior

An annoying incident occurred on 19 April 2016 with the shooting team of TSN TV channel on the premises of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. Having arrived at the Lavra father superior’s, Metropolitan Pavel, birthday celebration, the journalists were not able to make a single shot that could discredit the Church.

The “1+1” news service, “famous” for its regular scandalous plots about the UOC, in which lie is skillfully dozed with unrestrained make-believe flow, has been unable to make at least one anti-church film over the last several months. It has to be ‘content’ with placing on its site blogs of the respective ‘content’, made up in a small way by plagiarist writers from Lvov. It’s hard to say what is the reason of such depletion – perhaps, the scriptwriters’ imagination has run down, or the seasoned journalists who were in charge of these plots have been transferred to a different field of operations. Still, this is not so much important. What matters is the once interrupted tendency has been resumed. However, the “TSN” present journalistic brushwood has yet to reach a professional level of their senior colleagues. 

The latter had a clear-cut line according to the No1 rule of any TV reporter: if you speak about something, you have to show it recorded! 

What do we actually see in the film produced by these cheerfully smiling little boys with microphones? We can see the Lavra’s territory, pilgrims, monks, clergymen. But what can we hear?

“During the shooting unknown individuals threatened the journalists and damaged the car”, this is the quote of loved by people “1+1” news presenter Natalia Moseychuk.

Now let’s switch on logical thinking: if you record something and get intimidated while recording, should these threats get recorded? Moreover, if you then lay an emphasis on this fact, making the plot? Obviously, they should. However, we do not see it in the footage. Slightly later a TSN reporter Dmitriy Sviatnenko, who was filming the event, states, “We were recording from the car, two young men approached us and started to intimidate us. We locked the car to take precautions”.

Even being locked in the car, equipped with camera, mobile phones with the video recording function, the journalists failed to fix their offenders.

But they were lucky to record a flat tire of the car which purportedly belonged to the editorial staff, shown on the screen of the amateur camera.

True though, there is one embarrassing fact: the date that can be seen on the camera is two years old (2014). Besides, we could not see at all the entire editorial car with the deflated wheels.

At this point we could have stopped but the “TSN” administration didn’t. On the next day another shooting team was sent to the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, this time consisting of girls instead boys. In the best traditions of Hollywood paparazzi fixing stars right in their bedrooms, the reporters of the most popular TV channel in Ukraine openly provoked the parishioners who were going to congratulate father Pavel on his jubilee even on the second day following his birthday. On the next screenshot one can clearly see a “1+1” female journalist, whose name remained unknown, pursuing one of the men, following hard upon him, and defiantly recording him with her tablet at half a meter distance. When the guest’s driver tried to prevent her from shooting, she uttered a magic phrase: “We are shooting in a public place!”

In order to impart a semblance of serious reporting work to this provocation, young journalists think up on-the-spot “proven” details: they point to the black “Toyota” which is parked so that to impede shooting of the Lavra father senior’s residence; to the unfamiliar priest who subtly takes a seat on the bench occupied by the journalists and pretends to be talking on the phone, and to many other unconvincing twists and turns.

Finally, at the very end of the plot dramatically entitled “Assault in Lavra”, the viewers at last understand what this rat race was all about: to remind the citizens of Ukraine that Metropolitan Pavel is a very, very bad man.

For he, as the presenter recalls, “personally offended journalists several times, while in the autumn had a hot argument with the new police”.

Well, it turned out unsophisticated. The young journalist brushwood from “TSN” evidently lacks skills to “hit the stride”. Even though they acted under the tried and true scheme of yellow journalism – come, provoke, record – it came out being simplistic, clumsy and lame. Let’s hope they’ll be able to handle the next framed-up blackwash against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in a more creative and professional way!

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