It must have been a heady experience getting a special invitation from President Viktor Yanukovych to see a small slice of his multimillion-dollar estate in Mezhyhiria, and have it all filmed by presidential camera crews.

The experience was so intoxicating that the assembled journalists in attendance lost their heads and didn’t even bother to ask Yanukovych any tough questions.

How did he acquire Mezhyhiria from the state? Why was a complicated web of shell companies used to mask the transaction? Where did the money come from for the purchase and elaborate renovation under way in recent years at the 140-hectare luxury compound? Who controls it? How much was paid?

No, TV personalities Savik Shuster and Yevgeny Kiselyov, among the hand-picked stooges in attendance, didn’t think it was polite or relevant to ask questions in the public interest from the state’s top public servant. So they ended up serving more as props for presidential PR than journalists.

Shuster and Kiselyov appear very interested in being part of the insiders’ club and pulling down big salaries as hosts of popular, televised political mud-slinging matches. They appear less interested in doing any real journalism, or using their positions and fame to serve the public interest.

Confronted about their presidential tete-a-tete, they were shameless, unapologetic and even confrontational about their lapses.

“I think that all Ukrainian journalists are divided into two parts: those worried about the problem of Mezhyhiria and those interested in actual politics. I belong to the latter category. That’s why I didn’t remember it,” Kiselyov said. “Honestly, I do not care about it.”

“It is not correct,” Shuster said, acting more like someone invited to tea with the queen rather than a journalist with the president. “The guy is inviting you to his place and you are spitting into his face. This is not how things are done.”

Shuster is right in saying “this is not how things are done” – in Ukraine anyway. Shuster, Kiselyov and others puffed up on their egos think they are the story, not the story itself. And the story here smacks of abuse of government privileges with a strong whiff of private graft. And when it involves the president, it’s a big story.

Mistakes in fact and judgment happen in journalism and we make our share. But, for goodness sakes, not trying at all to get the story or ask the hard question is the biggest sin of all. Approaching its 20th anniversary as a nation, Ukraine’s journalists need to be less supine and servile and remember who they should be serving – the public, not politicians or vested business interests.