So, I’m wondering if it would be legal to have a reality show where contestants were almost certain to die? Sort of like an extreme version of Survivor - where all the contestants have signed off that they know the risks inherent in participating but were still willing to risk more than just having to eat a bunch of bugs.
Now, I suspect the answer is no, but I’m not really sure why – how would that be different than, say, NASCAR, where in spite of all the safety precautions, somebody is eventually going to die.
Would it be legal if you left open the possibility that all might survive, but illegal if it was guaranteed at least one person – no matter his or her consent to participate – would die?
I realize that this is hypothetical – but I’m wondering if there’s actually something in common law or specific legislation against it?
And before anybody brings it up… ethics smethics… this is reality TV we’re talking about.
You could have one in a Nursing home and let the contestants vie for money to leave for thier decendants I guess. Let’s see who can last longest off of thier respirators, three legged races down the hallway and such. :eek:
No it wouldn’t be legal, because you can’t consent to be murdered. Even if I left a written notarized deposition saying that I consented to be killed by hellotherepoodle on April 6, 2006, you’d still go to jail if you murdered me.
So any studio executive who contrived a show where someone was guaranteed to die would go to jail for murder, or conspiracy to commit murder, or solicitation of murder, exactly what they’d be charged with would depend on exactly what they did.
IANAL, but my assumption would be that setting up a situation in which one or more contestants is guaranteed to die would easily qualify as “depraved indifference to human life” at the very least and would be enough to sustain a charge of murder, manslaughter, etc. based on the specific wording of the law in the jurisdiction. AFAIK it’s not a defense to murder that the dead person agreed to be murdered. Even if this were somehow shoehorned under the heading of assisted suicide (the “first one to off themselves in a nursing home wins money for the offspring” idea), assisted suicide is illegal in every state but Oregon and there only under certain rigidly defined circumstances. I suppose you could generate a contestant pool from those who meet the Oregon criteria (of sound mind, two doctors certify that the person has six months or less to live) which might barely skirt the legalities.
But could you meet the test for malice aforethought?? I’m assuming that the producers of the show are killing no-one directly and ordering no lackeys to kill contestants… you’re simply setting up dangerous challenges for them, that not many people could achieve succesfully. They’ve volunteered for the challenges, and signed off on that.
Did the producers ‘intend’ to cause grievous injury in that it would be good for ratings? Is putting money above the lives of the contestants legally “depraved heart”?? In those cases, there might be a case for murder.
Basically, it comes down to whether anything in the show could qualify as a criminal offense, I believe. Doesn’t have to be murder. But criminal acts, if I understand correctly, can’t be made to go away with a waiver.
The OP said “almost” certain to die, not guaranteed to die. Some of the ones that they already have have had a high certainty of death. That Richard Branson one where they walked up a ballon and also jumped between ballons comes to mind.
My above senario does not guareentee death either, just makes it highly more likely than just sitting around waiting to die.
Apparently it’s legal to run, say, a sky diving club, and the customers sign waivers stating they’re doing it at their own risk. So where do you draw the line between “some risk of death” and “almost certain death”?
If you want reality, here it is: the family of the first person to die would sue the producers, the network, and anyone else it could find into bankruptcy. Almost certainly.
We’re talking about reality show contestants here. The only such show I watch is Survivor, so my sample may be a little bit limited. Here’s the typical contestant:
Don’t bother learning how to make fire.
Don’t bother learning how to build a shelter.
Don’t take up running or climbing or something strenuous (one person on this season was a 3-pack-a-day smoker until the day they started filming).
Don’t bother learning how to forage for food.
When you’re starving (and again, this season, they lived on practically nothing but water for the first couple weeks), don’t bother fishing, even though you have fishing hooks and line.
Don’t bother ever watching the previous episodes to see what life is like (or, say, how to go fishing when all you have is fishing hooks and line).
Don’t bother going foraging for food even after they show you in a challenge what’s edible and where to find it.
Forget that four is greater than three.
Forget that everybody else wants to win, too, and if they let you win, it means they don’t.
Sometimes I think it’s all the producers can do to keep these people from just lying down and dying, like all the people on Miranda who didn’t become Reavers, let alone keep them from killing themselves in the challenges.
I think they mean that they would die as a direct result of being on the show (most likely violently), rather than a show just documenting someone dying of a slow, horrible disease.
I think there’s a big difference between paying somebody to do dangerous stunts that, if things go wrong, could cause them to die, and paying somebody to do dangerous stunts that by their very nature are likely to cause someone to die.
How many people die per contestant per race at NASCAR? I have no idea, but it surely isn’t a very big number. 1 in 10,000? Lower? I’m just pulling numbers out of my ass here. What we’d need to know is how many NASCAR races there are per year, how many contestants there are in each race, and how many fatalities per season.
Now, does NASCAR usually get sued by the families of people who die in NASCAR crashes? Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But what if those families could produce evidence that NASCAR officials deliberately took steps to ensure more fatalities per race? Wouldn’t they have a better case, even if those NASCAR officials could escape criminal prosecution? And if they could produce evidence that NASCAR officials deliberately made NASCAR so dangerous that someone was very likely to die, what then?
Any contest where at least one participant was guaranteed to die would be criminal. Any contest where participants were very likely to die would probably be criminal, it would depend on the jury. Any contest where participants were very likely to die would open the officials to bottomless civil liability.
Now that I think of it, this is really the only place reality TV has left to go. And, because it’s reality TV, I’m sure it will be done in the classiest way possible. As a slight hijack (but a related one), has anyone died on any Japanese game shows? The few clips I’ve seen of some of those are thoroughly brutal and the possibility for death or dismemberment seems pretty high.
No fatalities in the last 6 million miles driven. Based on that rate, it’s about ten times as dangerous as driving to work. Risky, but honestly, probably safer than rock climbing.
Could we do a reality show with terminally ill contestants?
“Last brain cancer patient standing?”
Man, that’s tasteless, but dear lord, might happen.
If you say it isn’t a reality show, isn’t dying about as real as it gets?