Culture: More thoughts on Wesley Durden, TLC and ethics in reality television
- I understand that a lot goes into putting these shows together, but there has to be a better way to deal with actual reality when it creeps into our reality programs.
- Tucson Weekly’s Dan Gibson • Offering up a good point on last night’s news that a reality show contestant, Wesley Durden, committed suicide, but the TLC show, “Next Great Baker,” hid it from the audience until he had been eliminated from the program. “They did throw a card up at the end,” Gibson points out, “but this still seems like a series of bad decisions to me and wildly insensitive to the guy’s family and friends, but maybe we’re still all supposed to be upset that the same network runs a show about Muslims or something.” And that, friends, is a great point. Here’s a network that’s getting criticized for the wrong thing: Instead of getting wrongly criticized for airing reality shows about Muslims, they should be getting rightly criticized for their intense focus on ratings in the face of the ethical treatment of the people it puts on its shows. source