'Lord of the Flies' Style Show Raises Ethical Concerns

July 18, 2007 — -- An upcoming reality show to air on CBS this fall in which 40 children live in an abandoned New Mexico mining town with no adult supervision "exploited loopholes" in state child labor laws and is arguably unethical, experts told ABCNEWS.com.

The children, 8 to 15 years old, spent 40 days working on the set for up to 14 hours a day. There was no adult supervision, and no teachers on hand despite filming during the school year. According to the show's Web site, the kids of "Kid Nation," filmed in the abandoned mining town Bonanza, N.M., "will try to fix their forefathers' mistakes and build a new town that works."

By using children, "Kid Nation" is being hailed by its producer as a return to the pure and unselfconscious style found in the genre's groundbreaking programs like the maiden seasons of CBS's "Survivor" and MTV's "The Real World."

"It's hard to find good adult reality characters. They all know what they're supposed to do," Tom Forman, the show's producer, told TV Week in a recent interview. "You need participants who didn't grow up on this stuff."

Forman, who also produces ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" is currently on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

Experts, however, who have yet to see the program but are familiar with the production wonder if it is ethical to isolate children to record how they respond to the stress of taking care of themselves, dealing with one another -- and competing for thousands of dollars.

"This sounds terrible, and I think it's unethical," Geoffrey White, a psychologist who has worked on a dozen reality shows, including ABC's "The Mole," told ABCNEWS.com. "Any psychologist working on this production would be unprofessional at best and unethical at most."

White said that when put in the high-pressure situations that have become typical of today's reality shows, even adults can experience serious emotional stress.

"These shows are coercive and use the manipulative power of group pressure to bring out the worst in people," he said.

He said that one of "Kid Nation's" worst abuses of ethics was asking the children's parents to consent to filming without knowing the details of exactly how each day on the set would play out.

"Informed consent is not a foolproof process," White said. "How can you explain to someone that they will lose their capacity to make a decision? You can't say, 'Here's everything you need to know about being vulnerable to group pressure.'"

According to Robert Thompson, a professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University, despite -- or because of -- the show's ethical ambiguities, it should make for "compelling" television.

Thompson also said that previous reality shows like "Survivor," "Amish in the City" and "Extreme Makeover" were met with skepticism and derision before they aired, despite being considered harmless in retrospect.

"It sounds as though they have come really close to crossing the line, but it also sounds like it might be really interesting," he said.

"I'm a big defender of reality television, and ultimately these shows prove not to be the cataclysmic cultural events that we thought."

Thompson, however, said there were concerns about the way the production skirted industry standards, filming in a state with lax labor laws and declaring the production a summer camp.

New Mexico officials have since closed the loopholes that allowed the children to work onscreen for long hours but cannot help but believe the show's producers took advantage of the state by skirting their own industry's standards and regulations.

"We trust that networks or production companies are going to abide by industry guidelines," said Carlos Castaneda of the New Mexico Department of Labor. "There were loopholes that they took advantage of.

"I don't think they could successfully film the same way for another year in New Mexico, since we changed the law. This is why we changed the rules to protect children."