I came across this post from a blogger who was in Dr. Phil's audience for the the so called "homeschool" episode. The level of manipulation was staggering.
For example, the homeschool guests were told that they couldn't bring anyone younger than 18 years old. Dr. Phil brought in bus loads of students from surrounding schools to be in the audience. Nothing like stacking the deck.
For another episode on breast feeding, Dr. Phil taped eight days at the home of a breast feeding family. They used 30 seconds of the footage on the show, all of it negative.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
-----------------------------------
Related Tags: Dr. Phil, homeschooling, unschooling, hatchet job, parenting, school, yellow journalism
7 comments:
Thanks for the link. That was interesting. I was asked to send in a video for Oprah once on why I love being a stay at home mom. It was much the same with the editing. It is really shameful because that is going to influence so many people who may be on the fence with homeschooling (just like us a year or two ago!)
It is interesting that Dr. Phil pulled the "homeschool" episode from their schedule. I hope they table it permenantly.
After my wife mentioned that Dr. Phil had pulled the homeschool episode I poked around a bit on the Dr. Phil web site. I found:
http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/778
where Dr. Phil did an episode on female teachers preying on young teenage boys.
It appears that Dr. Phil is just looking for controversial issues that would give him buzz.
How very disappointing. I have had 2 journalists approach me asking for interviews about being a homeschool mom. When I question them about their own attitudes about homeschooling they retreat pretty quickly. I really don't trust them to present a balanced picture of it all. You would expect that from journalists, I guess. But Dr. Phil??! I am very disappointed in him.
I'm upset over the skewed approach planned for this show. Maybe I'm naive, but I hope the shoddy, sensationalistic approach was his producer's fault and not his (which, incidentally, could explain why the episode was pulled). After all, in his previous homeschooling episode, Dr. Phil at least gave a modicum of support for homeschooling (through 8th grade).
I'm surprised that people are so, well, surprised that a mainstream network tv show would not show an accurate view of homeschooling. TV is all about ratings and advertising, and a story about "normal" homeschoolers just doesn't seem like something that'd raise ratings or appeal to advertisers. Not sensational enough. But then, I've never watched the show, so...
Yeah, true. But for some odd reason I trusted Dr. Phil. lol.
Post a Comment