Comedian Molly Hawkey: The Ethics Of Editing Reality TV

Author’s Plan: To gradually introduce readers to different changes in reality tv over various generations.

“Televised events like the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the World Cup give us a rare opportunity to share a moment in time with the world,” proclaims Tim Leberecht of www.designmind.com (Leberecht). With our busy lives, we almost never take out time to spend with our loved ones, and these televised events are when the majority of people meet up and have fun. “Millie? Does the White Clown love you? Does your ‘family’ love you, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?” Montag asks Mildred (Bradbury 77). Guy Montag is questioning his wife out of desperation, and is extremely curious to know if she believes that her fake TV family really loves her. From this we can see that he is truly disappointed with life and his wife’s immoral addiction to television. We must keep in mind that our society today is not as dumbed down and obsessed with fake parlor shows that spread real, tangible people apart as Mildred is. TV today is a source of knowledge and learning, and creates the perfect circumstances and settings for the getting together of the people that really matter the most. One of the most important aspects of television is its ability to strengthen democracy and teach the law. “Seventy-two percent (of the US population) learn about elections and candidates from TV news,” states www.designmind.com (Leberecht). TV brings us information that is essential to maintaining our freedom and our guaranteed

Despite the controversy created by the game show Twenty-One for being rigged, I believe it is not a matter of ethics but rather a matter of "what you don't know wont hurt you." It is not unreasonable for networks to want to produce a show that is exciting for its audience. In a world where ratings mean everything, you have to have a show worth watching, something that keeps people interested. I understand lying is wrong and it was definitely unfair to the losers of the show but I really don't understand why it was such a big deal. Of course this is because I live in a different time. My generation of TV is filled with lies, but lies sell! One really good example of this is shows like Long Island Medium, it's clearly fake but there are tons

Do you know the guiltiest pleasure of the American public? Two simple words reveal all—reality TV. This new segment of the TV industry began with pioneering shows like MTV’s The Real World and CBS’s Survivor. Switch on primetime television nowadays, and you will become bombarded by and addicted to numerous shows all based on “real” life. There are the heartwarming tales of childbirth on TLC, melodramas of second-rate celebrities on Celebrity Mole, and a look into a completely dysfunctional family on The Osbornes. Yet, out of all these entertaining reality shows arises the newest low for popular culture, a program based on the idea of a rich man or woman in search of

The article “Dumb TV,” published in the University of Regina Carillon on February 8, 2014, is a critique of the ABC reality TV show The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, produced and directed by Mike Fleiss (The Bachelor - ABC, 2016). Written in an informal style, Destiny Kaus’s article provides data to support her thesis that states, “Overall, I really do think these shows are exceedingly dumb and they shouldn’t exist because the process doesn’t work.” In the article, she presents her bias by arguing that these drama-filled shows, where men and women compete for love and matrimony, are “dumb” and ultimately fail at providing everlasting love. The informality of the article creates a connection with the audience, but the excessive use of the word “dumb” distracts the reader from the actual brilliance of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette franchise. More important, this article is fundamentally flawed as it only references the simple analysis of these shows as a meaningless search for love instead of the tactical attack of capitalism by the television industry. Are The Bachelor and The Bachelorette actually “dumb” or are they a brilliant attack on people’s emotions for the benefit of a television franchise?

I am very glad for this. But wait a twist, well that just stuffs everything up now. Apparently the girls have to throw “caution” into the wind. But they all look horrified - as though the Bachelor is suddenly being used to cross promote the terribly successful The Great Australian Spelling Bee and the girls are all going to have to spell “caution”. I think one of them is going to develop a wrinkle just contemplating it. I still don’t understand what this show is about.

In his article, ‘In Defense of Reality TV: Reality TV as a Documentary’, Erik Fritts makes the eager argument that reality TV is a medium of Documentary film by focusing on the theme of director’s perspective and the documentation of human events. It is clear, however, that he leans against the usage of deductive reasoning as he glues together minor similarities between reality TV and Documentaries. By the same token, he also uses the Rogerian approach as he seemingly ricochets between his argument in favor of reality TV and the common belief that the genre is “...sometimes uncouth and uncultured…”(Fritts). Albeit, his use of the Rogerian model when approaching a generally one-sided topic is very clever because it grapples for the

According to Jesse Washington’s article, “How Reality TV is Changing The Way We Live,” one negative way reality TV affects participants in the way they live, is the way depression encounters their life when they are not on camera. In the article, Tyler Barnett admits that, "After being on camera for a month straight, almost 24 hours a day, when I got home I felt very depressed. And I'm not a depressed person," (Washington). Barnett is saying that when he does not have the attention that he had constantly for a month, he feels low and life doesn’t feel exciting anymore. This quote supports the negative effect reality TV brings to the participants of the show because, a former cast member of several reality TV shows, confesses the sudden slump

For close to a decade, the ethics behind the existence of reality TV have been questioned. While there are ardent viewers of reality TV, researchers and other scholars disapprove them, and claim that the world would have been in a better place. Reality TV shows, especially in America, are extremely profitable to media owners, and this has increased their popularity in the recent years. The main target audience for these shows are teenagers and women, who spend a lot of time discussing about them, even hours after the shows. Most of the reality shows in America and other parts of the world have common ideas. The most fundamental aspect of most reality TV shows is that they display people who go through embarrassing, painful and humiliating ordeals. This is what the reality shows expect their audiences to be entertained, and presumably laugh at the situations the people go through. For this reason and many more, it has been found that they are more detrimental than entertaining to the society, and therefore, the world would be in a better place without them (Pozner 89-91).

Reality shows say they are promoting healthy and normal relationships. The shows say they are not trying to sensationalize relationships or twist the story. The shows claim they do not edit the show, and that it’s all real and it’s showing exactly what the couples do. It

The cultural phenomenon ‘Reality Television (TV)’ has become an increasingly popular genre of television since its paroxysm onto the airwaves in 1945. The term ‘Reality Television’ can be defined as the genre of entertainment that documents the lives of ‘ordinary’ individuals through the exhibition of allegedly unscripted real-life scenarios, despite inquisitive inquiries disclosing Reality TV to entail facets of script. The primary objective of Reality TV is purely to entertain the audience. This genre of television is appealing to viewers due to its entertainment principle/value, the audience’s competency to correlate to the characters and their situations, and the contingency it presents for escapism and voyeurism. We can capitalise the Australian appropriation of the American popular dating Reality TV show ‘The Bachelor’ as a tool to further comprehend the purpose and appeal of Reality television. The postulations of media’s obligations to society in contrast to their current actions and media as a mirror to society - the normative theory, can also be utilised as an implement to apprehend Reality TV. Through the strict analysis of ‘ The Bachelor’ and the employment of the normative theory, the purpose and appealing factor of Reality TV can be deeply examined.

Today’s audience grabs hold of reality TV now a day. Looking forward week to week to watch these unscripted real life situation shows. In a way it 's becoming increasingly hard to avoid not watching. Some viewers see the TV show and tend to be attention seekers, and reality TV allows them to fantasize about achieving status through instant fame. Too much reality TV may lead viewers to idealize real world situations, like romanticizing dating. Like when Truman saw the girl in the library who was an actress and a fan of the show. He wanted to take her out sometime later that week, but she said it couldn’t happen because she knows what’s going on, but she had true love for him and asked to go out with him right then on a little date to the beach. As they went to the beach she was going to spill the beans and tell him everything. Then a man of the show in a car drove there to stop her acting like her father to get her before she ruined the show. It’s like most reality TV love shows on today people who audition for a show and know it’s scripted, but end up actually having a real feeling for the person.

Can you believe that reality television has actually been around since 1948? Most of us may have thought that this idea of real television just came about in the last decade but actually it’s been around for quite some time. In 1948 Candid Camera was the first reality show to be broadcasted on television. Many considered this to be the “granddaddy” of the reality TV genre (History of reality TV). This show actually began in radio broadcasting. Allen Funt was the man in charge of this whole new production. He started by simply taping complaints of men in service and broadcasting them over the Armed Forces Radio. This is what later became known as the television show, Candid Camera. Candid Camera was known for

If there was a topic that I was an expert in, it would be The Bachelor and The Bachelorette franchise, and that is exactly what it is, a franchise. I have watched the shows since I was a little girl, I remember watching them with my mother at a young age and now I watch them with my friends. I have not watched every season, but I have watched a plenty. Many people do watch the show for entertainment or so they believe, but studies have shown that it perpetrates the way that people think about love and life. Although, they do get entertainment from it, often people will leave the show “feeling entertained, amused, cheered up, or stimulated.” (ARTICLE)

Survivor, one of the first successful reality shows, is a show that puts a selected group of people in a beautiful setting leaving them to fend for themselves within the two different teams. Every week the two teams compete for rewards and immunity before someone is voted off at the end of each episode. The shows main theme is how the different people interact with one another, and since the theme of the show is outwit, outplay, and outlast there is plenty of drama to go around on the show. After almost ten seasons the show can’t just rely on the same premise that the show has been using for the four years it has been on the air so the producers have to rely on something else, sex.