Reporter loses grip on reality

Though the headline "Reality Show Faked" doesn't have much shock value, I was surprised to learn that a newspaper reporter participated in a sham on The Apprentice.

Deborah Young, a reporter for the Staten Island Advance, rented an apartment from one of the teams on Donald Trump's reality show for wanna-be moguls. She later wrote that the lease she signed on-camera at "27 percent markup" was a ruse -- she already had a cheaper deal worked out with the landlord.

Keith Hollihan, Young's downstairs neighbor, wrote an article for The Morning News that noted this Herb Stempel moment:

Since D[eborah] actually was paying less than the stated amount, this meant the results were rigged. In other words, wasn’t a participant being booted off the island on a false premise? The significance finally hit home, and I saw the parallel with Enron and its own accounting irregularities. In the world of business circa 2003, what could be more real?

While this harmless deception doesn't rate on the Jack Kelley scale, can we get a break from journalists dragging us further into the world of make-believe?

2004/04/14 · 0 COMMENTS · Link