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I Worked for an Amish Reality TV Show
The show represents the industry’s worst temptation to exploit characters and capitalize on their suffering
I’m not sure how I landed a job with a TV production company in New York. During my interview, I accidentally blurted out that I didn’t watch any television. In fact, I didn’t even own a television. Maybe they took my confession as some sort of Australian joke? Somehow, I landed the internship. But the joke was on me: I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
The company specialized in reality television about minority groups after it struck gold a few years earlier with a Big Brother-style show that placed naive Amish adolescents in a house with wild teenagers. The executive producer was a man with a vacuum in place of a soul, who still maintained that this ratings bonanza was his greatest life achievement.
As an intern, I had the task of phoning up Native American communities for the executive producer’s latest concept: a reality TV show about casinos that aimed to capture Native Americans fighting — physically, if possible. Not one Native American community was interested in speaking to me on the phone.
My internship eventually transitioned into a paid production assistant job on a show that, according to contracts, was…
