Exploiting Children: The Medias Perverse Reward
While cleaning my room of misplaced papers, I came across an article I printed for a past current event from CBS news called “‘Octomom” Vs. Jon & Kate”. This article discusses how “Octomom,” Nadya Suleman thinks she will not be as exploitative in her television show as she’s clearly believed Jon and Kate did. For those unaware of the two situations, Jon and Kate have a television show on TLC featuring themselves and the lives of their eight young children while Nadya, who now has fourteen children has begun a new series starring her family.
A major privacy issue comes to mind when reading this article. I think of the parents who have willingly put their children up for exploitation in the allowance of the confidential information being released. They subject these children for ridicule in the future and the inability to go out in public without paparazzi followers or recognition from common popular news follower. Why would you subject your child to such torture? Is there really a justifiable reason for objectifying someone to this cruel behavior? A greed for growth in popularity and a chance for fifteen minutes in fame do not come across as an acceptable answer for me.
Children should have the right to go to school, hang out with friends, and take part in any extracurricular without the fear that people already know about you from what they read and not from your actual personality. Going to a new high school or college for the first time can bring enough stress for people but how hard would it be when people already have judgment over you from what they read in a magazine, on the internet, or what they saw on the television.
Parents should have the common sense to not release information that could later or immediately hurt the well being of their child. The media should have the common decency not to air private and personal stories. These issues do not regard censorship but more importantly cover morals and ethics of our choices. Many decisions go into the public disclosure of information regarding those who cannot easily speak up for themselves, yet we choose to allow our youth to be exploited. We need to think about the consequences of everyone involved in matters instead of the money or fame at the end.
Julia, i completely agree with 99 percent of this article. The one percent that i don’t agree with is that there is no justifiable reason to subject your children to the media. From what I know from watching John and Kate Plus Eight, when the couple first had eight kids, they were pretty poor and with the amount of money Kate was making as a nurse was not enough to support the family. They ran out of options and took the show offer because, overall it would be better for the kids. Even if they are attacked by paparazzi when they walk on the street, their lives could have been much worse without the show. If they hadn’t taken the offer for the show, their kids could be starving right now, due to lack of money to feed all ten of the ffamily members.
Julia, I completely agree with 99 percent of this article. The one percent that I don’t agree with is that there is no justifiable reason to subject your children to the media. From what I know from watching John and Kate Plus Eight, when the couple first had eight kids, they were fairly poor and with the amount of money Kate was making as a nurse, it was not enough to support the family of ten. They ran out of options and took the show offer because, overall it would be better for the kids. Even if they are attacked by paparazzi when they walk on the street, their lives could have been much worse without the show. If they hadn’t taken the offer for the show, their kids could be starving right now, due to lack of money to feed all ten of the family members.
I know it was a very similar case wath the “Octomom”. Although some believe she was seeking fame, everybody knows that she could not have supported all fourteen children and herself without the money from the show. Similar to Jon and Kate, she was already poor before she had the octuplets.
So in the end, I think there would be only one justifiable reason to bring this upon your kids; to keep them alive and healthy. Even if it means making some sacrifices, she did what was best for the kids in the long run. Eventually, the paparazzi will go away and they can live normal and healthy lives.