CBS Faces Controversy Over New Show “Kid Nation”

LOS ANGELES CA (August 20, 2007)

There is troubling brewing in Bonanza City, New Mexico thanks to a brand new CBS reality show called “Kid Nation. ” 40 children aged 8 to 15 were dropped off in what had become an abandoned ghost town with “no parents and no rules“, as explained by Executive Producer, Tom Forman. As seen in a current promo running on CBS, for 40 days the children cooked their own meals, cleaned their own outhouses, formed a government and ran their own businesses, all without adult intervention or participation.

When “Access Hollywood” questioned Forman back in May about the show’s controversial premise he assured us that off-screen adult supervision was never far away, “There were all sorts of safeguards put in place and their were all sorts of adults standing by with a real commitment to step in only if we had too, if something went wrong and it didn’t.”

Now comes word that something may have gone wrong. According to the New York Times, at least one parent of a contestant wrote a letter of complaint to New Mexico state officials after the show finished shooting, claiming the experience bordered on abuse and neglect. According to the NY Times, several children required medical attention after drinking bleach that had been left in an unmarked soda bottle while one 11-year-old girl burned her face with splattered grease while cooking.

Questions are also now being raised about whether or not they violated child labor laws as it’s been reported that many of the children were working from sun up to past sun down. According to the New York times, a New Mexico official, whose department oversees licensing of congregant child-care settings, said in an interview that the project almost assuredly violated state laws requiring facilities that house children be reviewed and licensed. The official, Romaine Serna, public information officer for the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, said Friday that CBS had never contacted the agency. If the department had known of the parent’s allegations when the incidents occurred, she said, “We would have responded and would have assured the children’s safety.”

In an interview Friday also with the New York Times Ghen Maynard, the executive vice president for alternative programming at CBS, said they broke no laws. “We feel very comfortable that this was appropriate from a legal point of view.”

Today CBS released a statement calling The New York Times story, “an incomplete, misleading and patently unfair portrayal of Kid Nation. We are confident that the true story will be told in the weeks ahead through the episodes on the screen and the voices of the kids who participated — the overwhelming majority of whom had a positive experience.”

In addition, CBS also claims that in order for the children to participate, the parents were required to make arrangements with their local school system to make up missed school work.

Paul Petersen, best-known for his role as Jeff Stone on “The Donna Reed Show” disagrees, expressing his outrage over the show to Broadcasting and Cable magazine. Having endured his own problems working in Hollywood as a child actor, Petersen, now in his early 60s, founded A Minor Consideration in 1990, an organization which offers support to troubled child performers and lobbies for better protection against exploitation.

Petersen tells Broadcasting and Cable he believes CBS did violate child-labor laws, “Children working for 40 straight days … parents deliberately kept away, in the middle of the school year,” Petersen tells B&C. “It’s almost breathtaking the size of this travesty.”

Forman calls the criticism “inaccurate and wildly premature” and denies there were labor violations. “[The kids] don’t have SAG cards,” he says. “They took part in an experience. We followed them some of the time with cameras.”

Several of the children’s parents have come out in defense of the show though saying they would absolutely allow their children to do it again even though it required them missing up to six weeks of school for the experience. “Kid Nation” premieres September 19th on CBS.