"'Kid Nation' Parents Gave Show Free Rein" from the NY Times reports that the new CBS reality show "Kid Nation" featuring 40 children in a New Mexico ghost town fending for themselves - and that has caused outrage - has revealed the contract conditions that parents and children signed to keep blame off the producers - despite the fact that children were alleged to be in unsafe conditions. The contract was airtight as to the conditions - parents and children couldn't give interviews to the press without permission and could be slapped with a $5 million fine for disobeying the contract's provisions. The pay seemed measly for what the children were to do, seeing how they were "on" literally 24 hours a day.
In addition, this show sends the message that parents aren't important - that abandoning children is great sport. Perhaps the miscreants who run CBS should find real children of the streets and see what life for abandoned children is really like.
The 22-page agreement leaves little room for parents to argue that they did not know what their children might encounter. As is standard in such agreements, the parents and the children agreed not to hold the producers and CBS responsible if their children died or were injured, if they received inadequate medical care, or if their housing was unsafe and caused injury.
But while such agreements might be standard for adult participants in a reality show, it also takes on a different tone when the minor and the parent are being held solely responsible for any “emotional distress, illness, sexually transmitted diseases, H.I.V. and pregnancy” that might occur if the child “chooses to enter into an intimate relationship of any nature with another participant or any other person.”
I do not approve of this show. First off, no one in their right mind would send their kids off to a strange place by themselves for forty days. Second, the ignorant producers are encouraging children to kill by decapitating innocent chickens. It's coming to be that kids and teens are becoming more violent and how there is so much more violence in schools and in the media and on TV shows. And yet, they themselves are encouraging it.
I would not be suprised if this show lasts more than one season.
Posted by: Kennedy | September 26, 2007 at 05:39 PM