Can Reality TV Ever Be Safe

This is the Guardian today Why can't reality TV deal with its real life consequences I been a watcher of reality TV and a lo of reality TV for almost twenty years. I remember watching the first season of Big Brother when I was even and I remember watching them take themselves in clay and press them up against the walls of that house and just thinking like, what on earth is this crazy show I'm watching? I was probably tooun to be watching it, but I was watching it Sun Kalee is an investigations reporter for the Guardian Some of my favorite moments of TV ever have been on reality to TV. you know, I think I watched the David's Dead clip from Celebrity Big Brother. once every three months when I need to be cheered up No is that It's just the most amazing five minutes of TV. It's so funny. You know, come dine with me. What a sad little life, Jane. You won Jane Oh my God. Enjoy the money. I hope it makes you very happy. Dear Lord, what a sad little life, Jane My love for reality TV very much offset by a feeling of guilt, which is the K kindind of feel like one of the spectators in the Coliseum sometimes, you know, like eating nuts while the gladiators fight. Having watched these shows for my entire adult life. comes to terms with the fact that I don't think you can really make this sausage ethically. You know, as a viewer I'm complicit in this too I've enjoyed the conflict. I've tested my friends about it As viewers, we are complicit in making a show a here How should we really know about what goes on behind the scenes? Last week. An investigation into allegations of rape on the ratings blockbuster Married at F sight UK have shown againgain, how flawed the reality format is When you have couples living together, who don't know each other who are being thrusted togetherith in these really close living quarters and are sleeping in the same bed I don't know how you make that show safe Is it even possible to make a show like this safe while keeping it a bingible success Because what's happened with married at Fight UK isn't a one off fromr the Gardian I'm Noshi Nikal todayod in focus Could married at first sight UK force a reckoning for reality TV shows Here in Karleis, you're the Guardian's Investigations correspondent. You also hosted the very brilliant podcast series Unreal, which was a critical history of reality TV where you reassessed the culture of those naughties reality shows and just made us gasp at the ethics of it all at the time or lack thereof We're obviously here to talk about the investigation into Married at first sight UK The listeners who haven't seen What are the main allegations Yes, so Married at First sight UK, which is the British version of an international franchise that is very popular all around the world was recently the subject of a panorama investigation in which three women made allegations of non consensual or exploitative sexual practices So one woman alleged that during consensual sex, her partner ejaculated inside her without her consent and then two further women who were not named and anonymized to protect their identities alleged that they were raped by their on screen husbands during filming for the show We should say the men accused in the documentary deny the claims Lizzy and her on screen husband started having sex But Lizzie says it turned violent and left her bruised. I mean, for me, one example that really stood out was an on screen husband threatening to have someone throw acid in his ons screen wife's face if she told anyone about his alleged abuse. And this allegation was communicated to the production company at the time. and you would think that would be an incredibly serious allegation that would warrant an immediate shutdown of filming But it did not. Shan, can we talk about duty of care for a moment? Be what did these women say in the Panorama documentary about how they're treated once they raise concerns with producers. One of the women in the panorama documentary, Cle, who alleges that she had been raped by her on screen husband said that she complained the channel for about what happened to her. and how it hadd been handled by CPL before they broadcast our season She says that she told by Channel four that after a thorough review and found that CPL that followedlfare procedures and What I found absolutely stunning was that this series was aired with her in it. She would presumably have to watch herself interacting with the man that she alleged had raped her on national television whichich I think is absolutely remarkable. You know, the show could have been re edited to remove her from it. and she said that watching the show had an absolutely devastating impact on her mental health and left her with suicidal thoughts. And she report about Shona Mandison who basically said that her on screen husband, they were having consensual sex and He then ejaculated inside her without her consent. That was something they had agreed not to do She told the producers And the response seemed to be that they go get the morning after pill. Jonah was the only womans on the record with her real name in the documentary and she appears in the twenty twenty three season of Maths UK And she alleged that her partner on the show, Bradley Skeelly, ejaculated ins sight her without her consent despite a clear prior agreement that he would not do that. That was very much against her wishes. And what's really interesting about her case, I think, is the fact that the next day producers took her to get the morning after pill So Clearly, that would indicate that something had happened that was unplanned and might require further investigation Lawyers for CPL say that the production company did speak to Shona and Bradley afterwards and they said that Shona told them that she did not have an issue with it. However Shona did dispute that in the documentary What's really interesting is that when you watch that season you can actually see that Bradley's behavior towards Shona is not acceptable. There's interesting language that he uses around him allowing her to do things. And it's interesting to see how that behaviour wouldn't have come up in the pre show Retting. He's talking about her in a coercive way on camera. So you wonder how someone like that was able to get on the show to start with? hasn't actually watched Married at firstirst sight UK and she just sort of generally absorbed it through the ether. Can you just explain how it works Yeah, so Married at First Sight UK is a really interesting show. I think it's actually a bit of a throwback to an earlier era of reality TV because it has this concept at the heart of it, which is a social experiment, sort of like Hay Brother season one was a social experiment. So the experiment is a couple and they are match made by experts for each other and then they get married These actually aren't legally binding Reds here in the UK, but they get married on the first day they meet They go on honeymoon together and then they move in together and at the end of this process they have to decide whether they're going to stay together or get a divorce. But they literally haven't met until they're actually getting married Oh yeah. And I mean, if you haven't watched a show, like that's really the kind of the golden TV moment, which is that They arrive at their wedding and the women walk down the aisle and then there's just just fantastically interesting moment where they both look at each other for the first time back Yeah, I know absolutely stunning. Have they told you to say that? No, I definitely haven't. If you're a student of body language, if you're interested in, the laws of attraction and chemistry and all of these different things, it's really interesting to watch people meet for the first time and see whether there is that spark there or weather They look incredibly disappointed and they're trying to hide it. The Initial attractions not a hundred percent there. A at first sight has been around for about a decade How has it evolved over time Married at first Sight is I would say, like an international reality TV franchise. And so we've got married at first sight in Australia, the USA, Israel and here in the UK. that the former actually started in Denmark in twenty thirteen One thing I think is interesting if you watch the show. so I watched earlier seasons of the show and I've watched later seasons of the show And there's a big difference. there's a really big difference. So Early on you have I would say a kind of more sedate documentary style. of filmmaking. You't know this woman You don't know where she lives? Do you know what jobs she's got? No, I don't know anything like that. But how do you know she's going to like you Well I don't. So it is reality TV, but it's more about setting up the cameras and seeing what happens. It's a bit more flying the wall. fly on the wall heing a bit more closely to that original social experiment construct But then what happened was that the Australian married at first sight became this huge ratings Buster success I literally defend you so much because I thought that you were being legitate and going, I'm going to do it all above it. I'm going to say it in front of Sam I' in front of Cam. And then I found out afterwards that you had been seeing Cam and texting him behind her back. And so the British format changed in order to emulate that Australian success And it became, I would say, a much more aggressive, much more confrontational show. I'll get bored to say the same thing over and over again. you keep saying Be I have inside it Don't raise your voice at me. How many contestants or contributors would there be in anyone's series? And how long were the couples thrown together for? So you'd have ten contestants and the couples would be living together for around two months. They would have weekly dinner parties with all of the contestants together, which were often basically just big arguments. And one thing that they did as well, when the format changed was they put all the couples in together Previously the couples had lived in apartments on their own, but when the format changed, the couples were living very close to each other, which also meant that you had things like adultery, couplple swapping, that sort of stuff, which again It makes a very dramatic reality TV Of course, it's going to be a human cross to that Have they ever had any couples that have gone off and into the sunset or fallen in love and actually getting married? Yeah, yeah, they have. I've actually interviewed a couple who did fall in love and stayed together. and so In my opinion, what generally happens is that there'll be one or two couples that seem quite well suited and they will be the ones that you're kind of rooting for throughout the show. You really think they're going to pull through and make it. And as a viewer, you're very invested in that But then there' be couples that are clearly absolute car crashers who cannot stand each other and want out from day one and I would characterize as what happens to those contributors as quite coercive because instead of, you know, witaking up on day on the honeymoon and being like, I'm out They're encouraged to sayay in the show even when there's clearly no chemistry between them and they don't even like each other very much And that is purely so that you fulfill their arguments. You're the manipulat that, not me And I'm not talking to you anymore Por t of you. lease just listen to me for on. talkal to me again. just listen to you. And I think in that it's a throwback to an earlier era of reality TV. You know, I would say kind of the Wild West era of reality TV that we saw in the two thousands and twenty ten s and you had inccredibly shocking shows. I mean, for me, there' reality TV moments that stand out, you know, like Big Brother Fight Night when seecurity had to be pulled into the house to break apart couples type of very confrontational conflict driven show is a show that actually had slightly gone out of favour here in the UK. We had moved towards A more gentle kind model of reality TV. Really in what era. Shows like Pay Cff. I have done coconut and lime cake with coconut liqueur, toasted coconut of buttercream and lime curd. Love Island also became much less conflict driven and you also have on Love Island a real emphasis on resolution. Married at first sight UK, I would say is quite a conflict driven show compared to others Sharin, what's been the reaction to the BBC's panorama investigation? and How have Channel four responded really interesting because before Panorama aired, Channel four, I think putrou out quite a robust statement saying that these allegations were uncorroborated. But post airing, Channel four has removed all episodes of Married at F sight from its on demand streaming service. and it has commissioned an external review of welfare. after being presented what he described as serious allegations of unddoing Lawyers for CPL, which is the independent production company that makes the show has said that its welfare system is gold standard and it has defended how it acted in all three of these cases Interestingly, the government has actually responded as well saying that these allegations are serious and that there should be consequences for criminality or wranddoing. And what about at the top of channel four? What have we heard there So Ian Katz, who is Channel four's Chief content offfficer, has put out a statement saying that he watched the program and heurt the women's accounts, and he found them to be very troubling He said, Their distress is clear and for that of course, I am deeply sorry. He said that he was confident based on the knowledge that they had at the time, that they made the right decisions that they ensure that the women involved are being kept safe when issues are raised to them and they g them appropriate support. He also went on to say that obviously these are serious allegations and they will be taking a second look at them to see if there's anything they need to learn in the future to protect contributors on their shows Well we should say at this point that the men alleged to have committed rape or sexual assaults dispute many of the women's accounts and that CPLs say that at every stage, when it was notified of these allegations, they say they acted appropriately The women in the Panorama investigation feel differently and so some are taking legal action. CPLs say that they vet people before they come on the show, but How thorough is that process What I think is really interesting here is that Clearly there appear to have been broader issues here about safeguarding of contestants in this show, because this is not the first time Married at First sight UK has had issues to do with male contestants So in twenty twenty two, another Midafessa UK from contributor, George Roberts was arrested On suspicion of controlling and caressive behaviour after multiple ex partners came forward after seen him in trailers for the show Following a police investigation, no further action was taken against him and his episodes actually still aired. Oh wow. This comes back to this fundamental concept of the show, which is that you are putting complete strangers together in very close quarters without twenty four hour surveillance and supervision from producers So Even the most well veted show in the world, I think tw have issues. Here with Marary at F first Light UK, appears that there have been issues in the past And these issues have continued what I would say is that I don't think there's any amount of veting that you can do to make this format safe. I'm really surprised that it's taking this long for these sort of validations to come out And the reason for that and this is something that I've really thought about a lot since this panorama documentary aired is do not think there's any amount of veting that you can do. to protect women from predators because we know that there are abusive men out there in the world. We know that know women are most likely to be sexually assaulted by their partners And many of these allegations go unreported. so I don't know how a producer would be able to filter these men out pre show The thing about maths is that You are putting strangers together in hotel rooms and then leaving them alone there It's kind of astonishing when you add you stop and think about it, right Bed sharing as a practice is quite common in reality TV and always has been. So Love Island, they share beds, Big Bother they share beds. The cameras are always on. The cameras are always on, and I've spoken to reality TV producers on shows like Georgie Shaw. And they tell me that it's their job to watch the contestant sleeping and watch them having sex in some instances to make sure that there is nothing exploitative or nontonsensial happening and the contributors know they're being watched as well. That does not happen in maths One of the things that really stood out for me as particularly heartbreaking when watching the Panorama in Inestidation was one of the women saying she felt pressured to have sexual encounters with her on screen husband because she knew that the cameras would be arriving soon as she wanted him to be in a good mood before filming I wanted him to stop being angry, I think she said Right, So you've got strangers share in beds together, unmonitored, un surveilled. There's often alcohol involved. And then you also have the pressures and expectations of this show. One of the things that often comes up in maths if you've watched it like I have is The contestants clearly do not like each other very much and that's intentional That's intentional Reality TV producers are not putting contestants together who they genuinely think are going to be great matches and fall in love You want one or two people to fall in love per season, but you want the rest of them to fight, otherwise the show is boring onn the most recent season of Maths America They paired up a very career focused woman who was, you know, really set on being financially independent, doing well for herself, working very hard. They paired her up with a man who lived in his parents' basement Oh man It's so cynical and so gross Yeah, it's so cool for both of those people, right? Because she's going to be presented as shallow and superficial and he's going to be presented like, you know, a loser This is intentional, right? They need conflict, otherwise no one's going to watch a show happens when couples don't want to go near each other I would honestly describe this as a process of gaslighting. And it's not just women. you know, on the most recent season of Max America, a man expresses incredible unease with the fact that his on screen wife keeps trying to initiate sex with him and he doesn't want to have sex with her They're encouraged to work through their issues. They're encouraged to try and find things that they find attractive about each other, see if they can make the relationship work And I would define that as actually very coercive. You know, these are people saying quite clearly I'm not attracted to this person. I don't want to have sex with them And instead of producers saying, o, well, this is clearly a bad match, like thanks for your time, let's end the show. the reason they can't do that is because theyve got to film a show. So what they're encouraged to do is to keep the contestants together. make them work their differences. But what's really going on here is We need to keep filming. And from watching the Panorama investigation, I think that came through with the interviews with the women, which is that they felt that They needed to take that on screen husband's happy. because they were worried about letting people down. They wanted the show to keep going. They didn't want to make a big fast, make a big scene And so they felt unable to speak up about what was happening to them and really articulate very clearly that they wanted out of the show because You've got this big institution around you and you know, if you say stop, then what will happen? My name iss Katie How old are you, Katie? I'm twenty four Katie Weisor was on the X Factor in twenty ten. Tell us a little bit about you. Tell us what you're here for, what you hope to achieve. It was this massive season, the one that gave us one direction But like I just I wanna be a star In case if anyone has actually forgotten, you went really far in that competition, but the reaction to you was really intense and you were often painted in the tabloids as some kind of Villain How bad did things get behind the scenes for you Oh my goodness. I remember that in the very beginning it was quite good. They were like, oh, this looks like a new Gwen Stefi. And then out of nowhere it just completely turned and the headlines were like We hate Kate and pop goes the Weasel because it' was similar to obviously my last name I mean, I had death threats. it got that bad. I had acid attack threats peopleeople selling fake stories about me. I had such severe Duma from the whole thing even during that time. and I felt so trapped. It was one of the most frustrating experiences for a nation to have an opinion on me based on something that wasn't real And I just prayed every day that the tide would turn. Thanky. You've spoken publicly about your time on the Xactor and alleged that your mental health wasn't taken seriously Xactor said that robust measures were in place to support those in the show. but How did you feel about how you are supported Oh, how were we not supported? The welfare person was never really a welfare person. She was actually a casting director with no accreditations to mental health or anything else like this. It was just a welfare person. who when I later did a subject access request to everybody involved. And so for those that are unsure that means we all have a right to see our own data or what's been said about us, et cetera, et cceter. And so I did this request on the companies And this alleged welfare person completely ridiculed me on email. saying that I was a drama queen, I was being difficult. I was having panic attacks for attention. I mean, it was awful until one of the last emails that she had sent internally to say, I don't think that she is putting this on This is really worrying There was no afterca either. Once you're out, you're out. It sounds like I mean, you obviously had quite an intense time on X factactor. That puts it politely. What would good care for you at that time have looked like Well, I think they should have had legitimate mental health available and there but independent so that there's no conflict of interest because production teams don't need to know the specific ins and outs of everything. and for there to be also parents involved and alerted and in the know because at the time, I think I was twenty three or twenty four. But then there were other contestants that were sixteen or seventeen years old. Well sixteen constitutces a minus still, soad does seventeen Several years after appearing on the series, Katie alleged that she was sexually assaulted by an employee at Simon Cell's company, Psycho Enterainment. during a meeting about her music career The man who denies the allegations no longer works for Psycho In a statement, the company said that we became aware of Katie's clas through media reports in the autumn of twenty seventeen and immediately contacted her to launch an investigation Since then, Katie has gone on to study law and launched Owl, which is a foundation to promote safety in the creative industries How have you processed the allegations coming out of married at first sight UK? I was first so furious that we're still seeing pattern of I want to say negligence to participants We're in twenty twenty six And still nothing has changed. I think that it's all empty words and empty promises So have a format where two strangers are supposed to pretend L they've known each other forever and act like they're married and you know for it to somewhat be normalized, to share a bed and to be intimate and there's a lot of pressures there. Even with that, there should have been more protections around those intimate environments. So I ask why wasn't there And I believe that the only way that this industry can change is if we put safety back into our own hands because they just keep proving these companies and the industry sector They're not to be trusted because they don't do anything when they actually have the power to do so Katie, if someone young came to you now and said I want to go on reality TV show. What would you tell them? and what would you say I would say the industry just needs to change first. So I would just say it's very important that you know what you're getting into, you know what you're signing You know that you have a right to independent legal advice. and if they kick off and say, well, we'll just find somebody else, take that as a blessing in disguise Cing up It's a global franchise, but will married at first sight keep going A when you have looked into this world and you've looked at a lot of reality TV shows Do you see a pattern in terms of how contributors are treated when things are going wrong That's a really good question and it's hard to answer on behalf of an entire genre because reality TV encompasses so many different things and so many different shows I think that you can have a gold standard a duty of care on shows that are much less conflict driven are much less confrontational, are much less aggressive you know, gentler kind of reality TV shows. I think that is possible But you know, Married at first sight UK is a show that is often clipped up for social media. and that can work in the contestants favourors many times. Many of them have gone on to build like big social media followings and become online personalities I think there is a limit to the psychological protections you can put in place, know in terms of welfare support, checking in with a welfare producer, being able to speak to an on screen psychologist when you are being aired on a reality TV show that is broadcasting nationally to millions of people and Reality TV has gone through so many of these scandals now. you know I remember the two very sad suicides linked to Love Island in the mid twenty ten s Although suicide is always a very complex thing that is rarely driven by a single factor I think it is pretty widely accepted that both of those contestants really struggled to adjust to life after the show. There's something that happens to people when you're s famamous enough that it's difficult to get a normal job, but not so famous that you can live solely on the income and earnings that you make from that fame, you become put into this really difficult liminal space where you can't live back to your ordinary life, but you also can't make a living as a reality TV personality to say so many of you I think at that point You know, the work wasn't coming in, he'd finished celebbso dating, the buzz had kind of gone. And he didn't really know what to do for work. and He wanted to be his own boss and he didn't know how to do that. I know he had a massive tax bill that he paid And I think the stress really, really got to him. and he kind of thought You know, this fame isn't what it's cracked up to be. Where do I go now But it's not even formats that have a romantic element that face sort of, you know, historic scandal and you know abuse. And I'm thinking specifically of the Jade Goody Chil Bachetti racial abuse incident or, you know X factor's Lucy Spraggon, who was raped and told producers and It was then said that she was And that was the reason why she wasn't on the show. Us as an audience, we werere told it was due to illness, and of course it wasn't No, yeah. so after the third week of the live shows I was Rylan and I who's my friend from the show, we were moved to a different hotel and in that hotel, a hotel porter let himself into my hotel room and sexually assaulted me. There's a high risk of HIV when anything like that happens and I was presented with a choice to carry on with the show or to take PEP, which is an antiviral drug that stops you from contracting HIV. So yes, that did make me very unwell, but It wasn't the reason why I left the show. I know you've said you're very cynical about this, but there have been these moments of reckoning over the last couple of decades. know We've talked about The two love island contestants who took their lives after appearing on the show, which felt like a moment in which Things might change, the show might change. know, or future reality shows might have taken lessons on not just how to treat contestants or contributors as they are on the shows themselves, but care they need after it's all ended There have been changes, I think one thing that I reallyy observed with reality TV in general is There's much less alcohol consumption You know, on Love Island, they are limited now in how much alcohol they can drink. You will often see the contestants holding these sort of like big goblets of wine, but it's really a prop. they're often not drinking that much In general, I think that we do have better language and discussion of boundaries, consent in reality TV as a format. So yes, things are broadly speaking better. We dot have shas like there's something about Miriam where the big c rist reveal is that a woman is trans And that's seen as a shocking, awful thing I'm not a woman. I was born as a man We are in like more progressive times, however The engine of reality TV has always been conflict is no reality TV without conflict and the most profitable shows are the shows that can reliably reproduce conflict across different formats and territories and make independent production companies and brocaserss a lot of money. Ride at first sight is one of those shows and I think this is why this has happened. In light of all of this, where do you think the format goes next. I mean, is it possible that Marriit at first sight will just continue in the territories it's in It's too profitable to be cancellled across all the different territories ass in and I imagine they also have different licensing deals. So you know married at firstight UK might not be appearing anymore, but I'd be very surprised if married at firstight USA or marri at firstight Australia Uholded Garanteed hit year after year Why on earth did they killed the golden Duce That's just the reality of it reality of reality TV, Sharon Thank you so much for your time. Thank having me That was the Guardiianans Investigations repeporter, Shirin Kale and Katie Weisel, a campaigner for saafety in teelevision Thanks to both of them In response to the allegations, the men accused of rape and sexual assault on Married at Firstight UK deny the women's accounts George Roberts denies abuse allegations made by three former girlfriends. Channel four has said it commissioned an external review last month of welfare on the show after being presented with what it called serious allegations of wrongdoing CPL says its welfare protocols are industry leading and that they acted appropriately in all of these cases And that's it for today This episode was presented by me, Nosi Nik Bal It was produced by May Robson, Eleanor Biggs, Tom Glasser, and Hannah Adan. Sound desesign is by Rudy Zagatlo and the executive producer was Elizabeth Cassin. We'll be back later withith the latest This is the Guardian.