Ethics Newsline®

VARIOUS DATELINES
So-called reality television continues to push ethical limits worldwide, according to stories from the international press. Among the leading items:

• Two ethicists from Keele University in Staffordshire, England, have suggested that reality-TV producers should report to an ethics review board. Citing a new version of the program “Big Brother” that will use a house with a bizarre design to “toy with its contestants’ minds,” and a recent incident on the Australian version of the show that involved withholding from a contestant the news of her father’s death, ethicists Daniel Sokol and James Wilson propose that independent committees, composed of producers, broadcasters, academics, and the general public, review reality-TV proposals in much the same way as a university reviews potential lab experiments on humans. “The fact that something is to be broadcast as entertainment does not remove the duty to treat other human beings decently,” they write in an opinion piece for the BBC.
• Time magazine reports that a small Dutch television network is about to launch a new program in a “Dating Game”-style format — only this time the contestants are in need of a kidney transplant and will attempt to convince a terminally ill donor of their respective worthiness. While critics dismiss the show as stunningly tasteless, the BNN Network claims that it is confronting viewers with uncomfortable topics in order to stimulate debate.
• A former NBC producer has sued the network, claiming that she was fired after complaining of ethical lapses in the production of the popular reality series “To Catch a Predator,” which sets up stings to capture alleged pedophiles on-camera. The Hollywood Reporter and the Chicago Sun-Times say the million-dollar suit by Marsha Bartel alleges that producers of the series maintain an unsavory relationship with a “shadowy vigilante organization” and that the alleged pedophiles are encouraged to perform irrationally humiliating acts in order to enhance the comedic effect of the program. NBC has denied Bartel’s claims, according to the Reuters news agency.