Accusations are being made about TV reality shows in Slovakia and controversy is being stirred between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics in fact are asking for a ban on the transmission of such programmes, while Protestants are inviting reflection on why such programmes are enjoying such enormous success. The bone of contention is the programme “VyVoleni”, a kind of “Big Brother” in which images of the participants having sexual relations or in compromising positions in a villa close to Bratislava are often transmitted. According to the APIC press agency, these images have provoked record audiences for the TV Joi channel that transmits them. The spokesman of the Slovak bishops, Marian Gavenda, raised his voice in opposition to the programme at the end of last month: “Intimate relations between people cannot be manipulated and exploited for commercial purposes. It’s an immoral transmission that cannot be tolerated”, said Gavenda. Of the same view are also the Catholic Youth Movement and the Association of Catholic Journalists, which have launched a petition for the withdrawal of the programme and appealed for a boycott of the companies that sponsor commercials within the programme. More conciliatory is the position of Pastor Ondrej Prostrednik, general secretary of the Ecumenical Council of the Churches in Slovakia: “We ought to ask ourselves why the programme is enjoying such success, before invoking legal measures to suppress it; it’s a programme that reflects the paradoxical combination of individualism and voyeurism characteristic of post-Communist society”.
