Well, apparently when it comes to Survivor, nobody is policing them.
Well, Dirk’s testimony about the tapioca and the fish traps certainly makes it more likely that the pig was planted in Survivor II.
I also had suspicions about the ease with which the tribe “found” their rice after the flood, and their good fortune in “finding” fire after the rains extinguished theirs.
To those of you who doubted that those “coincidences” were manipulations, are you still convinced?
Like David B, I’m inclined to believe Dirk’s testimony.
As to what a court of law will do with the case, it sounds to me like Stacey has at least enough evidence to avoid summary judgment, which means that barring a settlement, the case would be submitted to a jury. Determining the credibility of the various witnesses will be entirely up to the members of that jury. I can easily imagine the discussion between David B and Scylla about the credibility of the witnesses taking place in a jury room.
This juror would vote against CBS, based on what I’ve seen so far.
spoke- said:
I think I might have mentioned earlier that it does indeed cast more doubt on the pig incident. I had not really been that suspicious of it before, but now… I was always a bit suspicious of how easily they found the rice, and never really thought about the fire. I am now even more doubting about the rice, but I think the fire might really have been coincidence – it didn’t really play that big a role.
While it will be up to the jury to determine credibility, remember that in a trial, CBS can also parade a ton of witnesses to deny that what Dirk said is true. So once everything is said and done, the jury may sit through 20 or 30 people saying it’s a crock, with just Dirk saying it really did happen that way. Credible or not, they may be easily swayed by the quantity, if not the quality.
David B wrote:
Sure it did. The survivors were wet and shivering from cold, and what’s more, they had no way to cook their rice. Without fire, they would have been in serious trouble.
At the time, I thought I detected a “wink and a nod” in Roger’s demeanor when he talked about how lucky they were to “find” the fire. I still think the odds are very long against finding a fire just at the moment they needed it most.
As I mentioned when this came up earlier, I grew up on a farm that abutted a National Forest. Thunderstorms were very frequent, yet in the entire time we lived there, I never once chanced upon a lightning-strike-induced fire. If I never saw one in 20 years, what are the odds of one starting just at the moment the survivors’ fire went out? To further refine it, what were the odds of one starting within easy walking distance of their camp? (And walking distance was not very far at that point, in view of their weakened condition.)
As to the credibility of the witnesses, it’s been my experience that one witness who has no reason to lie can overcome a parade of witnesses who have an incentive to hide the truth.
Also remember: we’ve not yet heard testimony from Burnett. How will he perform once he’s placed under oath? Some people are good liars, some aren’t. (Not that I’m assuming his testimony will be false…) The demeanor of a witness can be as telling as his actual testimony. A parade of witnesses won’t help if those witnesses are shifting in their seats and having trouble looking a jury in the eye.
Time may tell, although I predict CBS will seek settlement rather than take their chances with a jury.
spoke-, you make good points about the fire. You’re right – it is an awful big coincidence.
But the case could be made (and, I’m sure, will) that most of them don’t have an incentive to hide the truth. Indeed, they might not be (I’m talking about the other contestants who weren’t involved) – they might simply not know about it. It will be difficult for Stacey’s attorneys to make the case that this sort of thing was going on but also explain that the others might not have known about it. Not impossible, but difficult.
Burnett is a good liar. He’s been lying to the press all throughout the Survivor media blitz, on a wide variety of topics.
I disagree. They are going to fight it as hard as they can, in the hopes that they bankrupt Stacey and/or can convince a jury. The only way they will end up settling is if they don’t have to admit anything funny was going on and don’t have to pay Stacey a cent. I think the only thing they might be willing to give on is dropping their counter-suit against her.
Do we have to wait for your article, or can we have some more examples?
When the press somehow found out that the players didn’t even know who had won, because the votes had been whisked away to be revealed live, he flat-out lied to the media and said that the players DO in fact know who won.
He has also told many reporters not to believe anything he says because he will tell any lie to protect the secrets of his show. Now, he was talking about making sure nobody knows who wins and all that, but the fact of the matter is that he lies, he lies well, and he admits he lies.
spoke-:
Argument from Personal Experience. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you whose debating tactic this resembles, spoke-. Just because you never found a natural fire in the woods doesn’t mean no one can. In a forest we know had been on fire only days before.
Whatever other manipulations may have occurred, the producers demonstrated over and over again in season 2 that they were willing to let the castaways go cold and hungry. It was a natural fire. They got lucky and found it. Let it go.
Fiver wrote:
Dirk’s testimony (that the producers planted tapioca and sugar cane, and talked about placing fish in the survivors’ fish traps) suggests otherwise.
Besides which, allowing a survivor to die of hypothermia would not be good for business. Wouldn’t you agree?
Of course I’d agree. But they were in a tropical environment and it was never suggested that it got cold enough to kill them. They’d spent nights without fire before. Why “fix” something that wasn’t broken?
Dirk’s testimony is about Season 1. There’s no evidence of tampering with Season 2; no “smoking gun,” anyway, just a smoking log. Even if we accept that Season 1 was tampered with, it’s also plausible to me that Burnett realized (based on the ratings) the show was just as watchable without it, and so stopped it for Season 2.
[hijack]I just read at cnn.com that the UK version of the show is tanking. I wonder why, given that “Big Brother” is so popular over there?
I don’t think they ever went multiple nights without fire. At the time they discovered the burning log, they had just traded their tents and Texas flag for food. The rice they received in the trade was swept away by the flood and they didn’t recover it until later that evening. Still, they were unable to start a fire because they lost the matches.
Because they were unable to start another fire, they went to bed without eating that day and possibly even next. We know they had at least 10 days left in the outback because Rodger was with Keith when he found the log. They would not have been able to survive without some outside assistance or if they hadn’t found the fire. It’s impossible to say whether the show would’ve bailed them again. We don’t know if they could’ve made another deal. What else could they give up? They didn’t have anything else.
spoke- said:
They were cold, but I doubt anybody was in serious danger of dying of hypothermia.
Fiver said:
Yes, that’s possible. It’s also possible that he figured he’d gotten away with it, so why not keep going? People who get away with lies don’t usually stop on their own.
That may be the reason, actually. For one thing, they were going head-to-head at least part of the time (they aired Survivor-related stuff more than one night a week, though they’re cutting back now). For another, Big Brother is really quite a different show than Survivor. On BB, they are in a more or less “normal” situation and people watch things as they happen. With Survivor, of course, the storyline is made up ahead of time.
Plus I guess their version of BB has had some nice nude shots. 
Don’t they need a fire to boil water, so they don’t get sick and die?
Good point – I’d forgotten about that.
Water cools the body 25-30 times faster than air.
Given wet, windy conditions, you can develop hypothermia even if the air temperature is over 60 degrees. If you’ll recall the earlier episodes, the survivors were very happy to get blankets because it gets cold at night in the outback. We know that before they “found” the fire, the survivors were shivering with cold. Shivering is an early warning sign of the onset of hypothermia.
One reason hypothermia kills so many campers and canoeists is that folks (wrongly) don’t think of hypothermia as a risk in the warmer months.
The risk of hypothermia can’t be dismissed out of hand, and I’m sure the producers were made aware of this fact by their medical staff.
I missed this earlier. Scylla asked David B:
I don’t know David B’s thoughts about an appropriate penalty, but I have a pretty good guess what Stacey’s thoughts are.
Without seeing her lawsuit, I would imagine she has included claims for breach of contract and fraud. She might possibly have included a RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization) claim. (RICO statutes were originally enacted to combat organized crime, but are worded so broadly that any allegation of organized corruption can generally be turned into a RICO claim.) If she’s creative, she could also make a claim for tortious interference with a contractual relationship (to the extent she had a verbal contract/alliance with Dirk, with which Burnett intentionally interfered).
Her actual damages (that is, her out-of-pocket damages) would comprise money she lost directly as a result of Burnett’s actions. If I recall correctly, survivors got paid in increasing increments, depending on how long they lasted on the show. Stacey could argue that if Burnett had not interfered, she would have made it at least one round further than she did. Depending on the alliances that were lined up, she could argue that she would have made it much farther, though at some point, the evidence becomes tenuous, depending on the unknown outcomes of immunity challenges and votes in which Stacey never participated.
She could also argue (again, tenuously) that more television exposure would have meant more endorsement deals, etc. Probably impossible to prove to the satisfaction of a jury, and indeed, without someone testifying “Well, if Stacey had made it one more week, we would have had her wearing a milk moustache,” or something along those lines, the judge probably would throw that claim out as too speculative.
But she at least has a minimal claim for one more pay increment.
An allegation of fraud or tortious interference with contractual relations would open up the door to a claim for punitive damages. With a punitive damages claim in play, the jury gets to hear such evidence as what sort of profits CBS and Burnett were making from the show. (In theory, this is to allow the jury to decide how much of an award would be enough to “punish” the alleged misconduct and to deter future similar misconduct.) So how much of Burnett’s profits would you have to take away from him to convince him that manipulation of contestants isn’t a good idea? What about CBS?
A RICO claim also opens the door to a claim for treble damages (that is, three times Stacey’s actual damages), as well as a claim for recovery of any attorneys’ fees and legal expenses incurred by Stacey in pursuing her claim.
The amount of actual and punitive damages to be awarded would be in the discretion of the jury (though a judge or appellate court can reduce awards that are patently excessive).
So, members of the SDMB jury: How much would you award, if you believed Stacey’s allegations were true?
spoke-:
Yes, spoke-…but they had the blankets. Blankets and at least one other person’s body heat is proof against hypothermia even in temperate climes.
Fiver-
Weren’t the blankets lost in the flood? Or traded for rice? Even if they still had the blankets, the blankets would have been soaking wet, and not much use. No fire, no way to dry them out. Furthermore, by that point, the survivors had very little body fat to shield them from the effects of the cold.