Amateur filmmaker Roman Kantor says they wanted to mock professional journalists for sensationalizing the truth.

“A lot of people were angry at the video, because they thought it had actually been aired as a news item, and they thought ‘these reporters are going mad if they make up junk like this, because it’s impossible not to notice an axe in a loaf of bread!’” Kantor says.

To make it more convincing, they taped interviews with a patient who simulates axe trauma, and a bogus doctor struggling to overcome the bread axe epidemic.

“We have an old lady here. We extracted an axe from her body three times bigger than the poor woman herself. Can you imagine how much of a hazard it was for her health!” the doctor played by Nikolai Kulikov was quoted in the ‘report’.

Nikolai Kulikov the second ‘culprit’ co-author lists stand-up comedy among his hobbies. But the doctor’s role in this video required him to sound dead-serious.

“This is quintessential journalistic lingo – a bit hysterical, a bit scandal-mongering, and with something important suddenly drummed up out of thin air,” Kulikov says.

The video literally sprung from the internet into mainstream culture.

At the recent Kinotavr movie festival in Sochi, it received an award as a pseudo-documentary. Mikhail Mestetsky, the third co-author is certain: besides being plain fun, the video sends a message to the journalism community.

“All TV news people were glad to see us make fun of their daily assignments: when they’re told to produce serious reports about total rubbish, and then show them on TV,” amateur filmmaker Mestetsky says.

Online resources like YouTube pit stories made by professional reporters against those produced by amateurs. Some analysts say the competition has begun, and it’s not clear who will be calling the shots.

“Rogue users, with wicked senses of humor, will be trying skillfully to forge information. And journalists will have to confront them with new information-checking techniques,” Ria Novosti web analyst Natalya Loseva believes.

A simple online search reveals thousands of home-made news reports. You can find anything online, from UFO sightings to rants, interviews and action footage. But with no efficient fact-checking tools, it’s still up to viewers to decide what can be real, and what’s fake, like the Russian ‘axes in the bread’ story.