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Editorial: Must reality TV also sully the kids?

John Moore, Getty Images

Falcon Heene, 6, of Fort Collins, Colo., was found hiding in the attic of his family home after his siblings reported that he was riding aboard an experimental balloon built by his father.

Balloon ride that wasn't appears to be a lesson in exploitation.

Last update: October 20, 2009 - 2:48 PM

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Tom Wolfe, the novelist who so well captured modern mores of 1980s American society in "Bonfire of the Vanities" and the 1990s in "A Man in Full," probably shouldn't try to write a book to define this decade: The unfolding balloon boy saga says so much about us already.

On the surface it's a story about media, money and a degree of madness -- and the damage done to the children of Richard and Mayumi Henne. But the mess also tells us something about the broader American family, which is so easily distracted from the issues that truly impact the country and the world.

The narcotic of fame is the dynamic that has generated the genre most popular on the nation's airwaves: reality TV. What started with "Survivor" and "American Idol" has spun off into subgenres of relationship reality like ABC's "The Bachelor" and even celebrity reality like NBC's "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!"

It's not only the celebrities who are having a hard time escaping, as anyone who's channel-surfed above the safe haven of PBS can attest. And that's partly because nearly everyone can be a celebrity today, especially if they're willing to do dignity-defying stunts or make mountains out of emotional molehills on shows like MTV's "The Hills."

Some of these shows involve adult children -- at least chronologically, if not emotionally-- such as MTV's "The Osbournes." Yet increasingly this everyday-celebrity phenomenon includes kids who are pushed by their parents into being part of reality shows. Of course, not every family qualifies. Doing your homework and having healthy, respectful relationships doesn't seem to cut it, as most reality shows favor the cut-downs and confrontations of dysfunction.

Increasingly, reality shows involve infants, toddlers and grade-schoolers who aren't empowered or haven't developed the ability to say no to being exploited for TV profit. Just pause at the checkout line at the grocery store for the sordid story of Jon and Kate Gosselin. And what of the eight in "Jon and Kate Plus 8"? How will their lives be altered by their parents' putting fame ahead of family?

And the show that gave the Heene family their first taste of celebrity, "Wife Swap," isn't complete without kids crying about their new parental pairings.

CBS took it up a notch two seasons ago, doing away with the distractions of dad and mom altogether with "Kid Nation," a reality show about kids trying to form their own society that played more like "Lord of the Flies" than "Boys Town."

Popular culture will always have characters like Richard Heene, Jon Gosselin and Nadya Suleman, the "Octomom" who soon will have an exploitative reality show all her own. And as long as there are willing contestants -- and viewers -- reality TV will flourish. The low cost and high ratings are media manna for TV networks.

But the line should clearly stop at exploiting kids, whose lives can be forever damaged when they're used as pawns by their celebrity-crazed parents. We can hope that the marketplace mechanism of public revulsion will lead to reduced ratings. Short of that, pressuring advertisers might do the trick.

The networks have already all but abandoned the "Family Hour" in primetime and have mostly kicked kids' programming to cable. It may be too late to prod them to be concerned about kids in front of the screen, but maybe the balloon boy fiasco will prompt some soul searching about how to protect kids on-screen.

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