PressEthic

Though I rarely have the time or patience to watch daytime television (or any entertainment television at all, for that matter), over the Thanksgiving holiday I had the opportunity to talk to my family about ethical issues in the media, and our conversation turned to The Tyra Banks Show.

My cousin's wife told me that she had recently seen an episode that enraged her, for good reason. On November 2, The Tyra Banks Show aired a program that attempted to expose possible modeling scams and alert aspiring models to the dangers of responding to open calls. They created a fake advertisement luring young models to meet with fake modeling scouts in order to show how easy it is to be deceived. This seems harmful enough, and the message is clear.

However, the show crossed the line when they went so far as to have the girls remove their clothing for a photographer. The majority of the girls did just that, only to be interrupted by Tyra and her mostly-male camera crew in a candid-camera moment that found them naked and embarrassed.

I'm all for activist journalism, and even, perhaps, activist talk show hosts whose intentions are to warn the public of possible scams. But this situation is appalling. If her goal is to prevent aspiring models from falling victim to such scams, then shouldn't she have stopped them before it went too far? I certainly don't have high expectations where The Tyra Banks Show is concerned, but this particular episode struck a chord with me. Tyra had this to say regarding the show on her website:

I went undercover to examine this scam epidemic. What I saw was mind-boggling. I couldn't believe it. I have heard tons of stories from women, but never saw it first hand. I felt like I was watching a movie, but I was experiencing real life! This was one of the most awkward and disturbing undercover investigations I have done. These impressionable girls just want a chance -- a chance at a dream. Maybe a chance to prove someone wrong who said they'd be nothing. Or maybe a chance to be loved by others, because they may not love themselves. But, sometimes the reasons girls go too far in the wrong direction is simply because they do not have the correct information to steer them in the right direction.

Good try, Tyra, but did you think how humiliating this experience might be for the girls you tricked? According to her website, the girls who undressed for the fake photographers (and were filmed by the show's camera crew and shown on the episode, with their nude bodies partially blurred) declined to appear on the show. Of course they didn't want to appear! A mockery was made of them and their bodies were exposed on national television! Sorry, Tyra, but you took this one too far.