Reality TV - Going TOO FAR!

I found this story on I Hate My Cubical: Adoption rights advocates are outraged at a US reality TV show in which a young adopted woman tries to identify her biological father among eight men - seven of whom are impostors seeking to convince her they are the real thing.

In Who's Your Daddy?, which will air in the States as a Fox 90-minute special on January 3, the woman eventually will find out which man is her biological father. But first she must interview and observe the eight men and guess which one is her birth father. If she's correct, she wins $132,000, but if she picks one of the counterfeit dads, that man gets the money.

"It's appalling," said Linda Hageman, vice president of professional services at The Cradle, a US nonprofit adoption agency. "It seems so insensitive to the adoption experience, both from the adopted person's point of view and the biological parents' point of view."

"This isn't just offensive, it's destructive," said Adam Pertman, the author of Adoption Nation and executive director of the Evan Donaldson Adoption Institute. "How can anyone think to turn such a personal, involved and poignant experience into a game show?" Adoption experts and ethicists expressed concern about the inherently deceptive nature of the show, with seven of the eight father figures attempting to manipulate the contestant into falsely believing that he is her father.