The allegations against the show were first published by The Sunday Times of London on July 22, two days after the conclusion of the first season of Man vs. Wild. Citing Mark Wienert, a North Bend, Oregon–based survival instructor and paid consultant for the show, the story charged that Grylls had slept in a cozy lodge during the filming of an episode in California's Sierra Nevada; that the wild horses he attempted to lasso in the episode had been hired from a nearby trekking station; and that, in a show that had Grylls constructing a Polynesian-style raft, Wienert and a team had built the craft first, then dismantled it so Grylls could repeat their steps. As frothing British reporters hunted down more cases of distortion, viewers sounded off in online forums.

Mark Wienert: That reporter combined a bunch of stuff, and it was taken way out of proportion. I already had a lot of the information on my blog. There wasn't any cover-up. This guy had an agenda.

Grylls: It made a good headline: Bear stays in a motel when filming. But the truth is less exciting. I spend a lot of nights under the stars, and for the times when I am not filming the live stuff out in the wild, or I'm about to illustrate something really physically exhausting, I stay with the crew in a base-camp lodge.

Reader comments on a New York Times blog report on the scandal:
1.  Knew it! I saw an episode where he used his backpack as flotation and floated down a river for miles. One problem: You could clearly see the outline of his life jacket under his sweatshirt.
2.  I suspected as much but don't care. I find it entertaining regardless. He's fun to watch. The situations are amusing and informative. Anyone who believes it's utterly authentic must be pretty naive.
3.  Even though TV "reality" shows are hardly that, it should be made clear when events are staged.
4.  If TV chefs can have food prepared in various stages because the viewer doesn't have time to watch it bake, then Mr. Grylls shouldn't be faulted for this either.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, celebrated British adventurer, posting on Grylls's Web site: The Daily Mail's attack on Bear Grylls mentions that he is "the cheese soufflé" of the adventure world. [Special forces] membership requires distinctly non-cheese-soufflé people. [The attack is] irrelevant and cheap, suggestive journalism of a misleading nature.

Grylls: It's been hard. I'm not that bulletproof underneath it all!

Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture, Syracuse University: How much reality do we demand from our reality shows? In this case, all the voltage of the show comes from the adventure and danger. This scandal gets at the fundamental heart of what the show is about.

Laughton: I don't believe that it makes the slightest difference. If the production company books you a room, you wouldn't go sleep in the car park instead just to show the world how tough you are! It is a TV show, not an expedition.

Grylls: As to the question "Are things ever staged?" the answer is, on occasions, yes. We have to condense so much action into a few days, and that involves good prior planning.

Thompson: Not everyone's watching for educational purposes. Steve Irwin's show was educational, but where would he have been if the crocodiles had been robots? The fact that he died while filming ... he was in real danger out there. Some of these shows rely on street cred.

Wienert: My experience with TV is that if you sit there and film someone sitting in the brush for 45 minutes, you are not going to have much of a show. But did Bear risk his life? Did he put himself in all those shoots I was involved in? Absolutely.