By Eric Deggans
St. Petersburg Times
Published 4/30/2004
Excerpt:
For Al Tompkins, broadcast/online group leader at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which owns the St. Petersburg Times, what separates the 20/20 report from reality TV is, well, reality.
“Reality TV is make-believe and contrived. . . . There are not these people who landed on a tropical island by mistake; they were chosen and placed there and paid,” said Tompkins. “What’s very different, theoretically, about this adoption story, is that we’re watching something that would have taken place if the cameras weren’t there.”
Questions remain: Is it ethical to place such a young mother at the center of such an emotional story? Particularly, when she’s telling the camera: “I was basically deciding if they were going to have children or not. I was kind of playing God.”
And even though fears the report will trivialize adoption seem unfounded, some may worry about the picture this program paints of the process. “You can expect a lot of conversation in the adoption community about how this portrays adoption and what, if any, effect this will have on other adoptions,” said Tompkins, who is father to three adopted children.
“A lot of what we know about things like adoption we know from watching TV, so it has to be reasonably portrayed,’ he added. “This is a thoughtful, serious process. It’s not a game.”
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