In October 2009, Wallace Souza, a member of the Amazonas State Legislative Assembly and host of the TV show Canal Livre, was charged with premeditated murder, drug trafficking and illegal carrying of arms. According to the case prosecutor, the ratings of Souza’s show—an “investigative journalism” program featuring COPS-style arrests and murders in the city of Manaus (9.10)—depended on these illegal activities. In many cases, the prosecution claimed, the show’s team arrived on the scene before the police itself, because it was Souza who had ordered the murders and had first-hand detailed information about the events.

The peculiarity of the case earned it worldwide coverage and was the subject of a Netflix documentary series titled Killer Ratings. The case of Wallace Souza and Canal Livre is a tangle of contradictory evidence and it is possible that it is a fabrication of his political enemies. However, if it is true that Souza and his team were commissioning murders to broadcast them later, this would be the first time that the media hunt that turns ordinary subjects into prey from reality TV (9.16) happened in tandem with an actual hunt for criminals with the express purpose of generating ratings; fiction killing in reality to produce more fiction. The circularity of the situation would seem taken from a chapter of Max Headroom (5.4).

Souza died in July 2010 from complications of Budd-Chiari syndrome leaving his judicial process unfinished.