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Does reality TV violate cast members personal privacy?

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Yes, reality TV dives too deep into the personal lives of their cast members.

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Here's a metaphor the meat-loving Chad Johnson can sink his chompers into: Amy Kaufman is revealing how the sausage that is ABC's dating franchise allegedly gets made in her debut book, Bachelor Nation.

'Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America's Favorite Guilty Pleasure' is available now. (Photo: Dutton)

The book penned by the Los Angeles Times film writer makes many claims about The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Here are the most unsettling.
1. Not all measures initiated after last summer's production shutdown of Bachelor in Paradise were maintained
Filming for Paradise Season 4 was halted last June after a producer raised accusations of misconduct stemming from a sexual encounter with Corinne Olympios and DeMario Jackson. Warner Bros.' investigation concluded that the complaint was unsubstantiated and filming resumed.

Though ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey described the ordeal as "a little bit of a wake-up call" in August, it appears one change had little staying power. Vinny Ventiera, a Paradise contestant, says bartender Wells Adams manned a log to ensure participants stuck to a two drinks per hour maximum rule. However, Kaufman writes that according to contestant Daniel Maguire, that rule was not enforced. "There was no log," Maguire told Kaufman. "If people really wanted to drink, they would find a drink somewhere."

Kaufman vouches for another rule, however. She writes that a requirement that contestants seek producer permission before having sex "was followed strictly."
2. Producers tracked the menstrual cycles of female contestants to get emotion-packed interviews
Ben Hatta, a former Bachelor/Bachelorette producer in the early 2000s, explained the benefit of the practice.. "So a girl's now crying, mid-interview, about nothing, or being reactionary to things that are super-small," he said. "It helped the producers, because now you've got someone who is emotional - and all you want is emotion."

In the book, Kaufman explains how brutal interrogations can be through a role-playing exercise with Michael Carroll, an ex-producer who bragged about what he could make her say. In the scenario, Kaufman was being interviewed while on a date with The Bachelor. Things quickly became intense. "Watching you and him is like watching (expletive) paint dry," Carroll told her. "I want to kill myself. You are boring me to death, and I know you're way more fun. If you're not into it, you can go home tomorrow if you want. You don't have to be here."

"The power of suggestion is real," Kaufman writes, "especially when someone is berating you and making you feel like a disappointment."
3. Editors have used "Frankenbiting" to manufacture their narrative of choice
Kaufman identified "Frankenbiting" (creating a sound bite that has been edited to have a different meaning) is a "main technique" editors use to create story lines. "There's no allegiance to what happened to reality," according to an editor employed for three seasons. "I don't care what happens," he said. "It's like I'm handed a big bucket of LEGOs and think, 'What do I want to build today?' "

Kaufman realized how drastically different someone can be in real life compared with how they're portrayed on the show when Bachelorette contestant J.J. Lane came to one of her viewing parties. "He came and he was so cool and normal, and that was the first time where I was like, 'Oh, (expletive), they really are playing with the way that these people are depicted on television,' " she tells USA TODAY.

More: 'Bachelor Nation' author Amy Kaufman still loves the franchise despite being 'banned' by ABC
4. Producers cast contestants into roles using offensive language
"You'd pre-categorize (contestants) and have some shorthand as to who they were," Carroll told Kaufman. "Mom. Southern Belle. The cheerleader. The (expletive). We all called them ridiculous names. The fat one, the hot one, the crier."

Further making the case for the show's disregard for its contestants, Kaufman says former Bachelor executive producer Scott Jeffress offered crew members $100 for evoking drama. "The first producer to get tears? A hundred bucks," Kaufman writes. "Catch a chick puking on-camera? A hundred bucks!"

"I need to bring people back from commercial," Jeffress explained.

5. Contestants have felt immense pressure to get engaged

"Almost every contestant I spoke with who made it to the finals said they felt they had no choice but to get engaged at the end..." writes Kaufman.

Jesse Csincsak, who was previously engaged to 2008's Bachelorette DeAnna Pappas, says contestants "don't have a choice, kind of."

"There is no 'What if I don't propose' option," he tells Kaufman. "It's just 'Here's the ring. Go give it to her.' "

"When you're twenty-five and you're just a baby and you're in a foreign place and are still hungover from the day before, they're in you're head," he adds. "They make you do what they want you to do."

Jen Schefft, the lead of The Bachelorette's third season in 2005, echoes his sentiments. "As the Bachelorette, she knew she didn't want to marry either of her final two men, but still didn't feel she could end the show without picking one of them to at least continue dating," Kaufman says in Nation.

"The producers basically told me that I was coming across as a horrible person on television - a really cold, (expletive) person," Schefft says in the book. "I always felt like I wanted to give them what they wanted, without being crazy. I was still true to myself, but I didn't want to disappoint anyone."

ABC declined to comment on the book's claims.

More: 'The Bachelor' recap: Becca's ex ruins the Fantasy Suites but steals America's heart

More: 'The Bachelor' recap: Frog gigging leads to goodbyes for Tia on Hometown Week

More: 'The Bachelor' recap: Three women exit before the hometown dates

More: 'The Bachelor' recap: Kendall takes on Krystal, three women leave

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2oSWpX3

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'Bachelor Nation' book: 5 shocking claims including high-pressure proposals, 'Frankenbiting'

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Here's a metaphor the meat-loving Chad Johnson can sink his chompers into: Amy Kaufman is revealing how the sausage that is ABC's dating franchise allegedly gets made in her debut book, Bachelor Nation. 'Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America's Favorite Guilty Pleasure' is available now.

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reality tv has a mental health problem - cnn

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We're not equipping reality stars for internet fame. That must change

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Stars of reality dating shows become our constant companions during the weeks and months they grace our screens.

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By: Amy Kaufman

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The Bachelor season 22 premiered on Monday, January 1, and fans of the ABC dating series noticed that contestants weren't indulging in copious amounts of champagne, as they have in previous seasons.

After the sexual misconduct allegations that arose during the filming of Bachelor in Paradise season 3 in June 2017, Warner Brothers implemented new rules on set of Bachelor Nation shows, including limiting alcohol consumption and enforcing more rules about sexual activity, according to TMZ. Us Weekly caught up with Arie Luyendyk Jr., who confirmed that he and contestants consumed less alcohol while shooting his season.

The Bachelorette After the Final Rose: Broken Engagements, Weddings, Babies, and More!

"I wasn't really aware of any new rules. I do believe there was a little bit less alcohol involved, but that's OK," the 36-year-old real estate agent previously told Us Weekly and other reporters via a conference call. "That's great because with that comes some ramifications. So yeah, I don't know if there was anything [on my season] done differently except for the limited us of alcohol and drinking alcohol."

Jessica Carroll, a contestant who was eliminated night one corroborated his sentiments, exclusively telling Us on Tuesday, January 2, that "there were no girls that were getting drunk" during the first night of filming. "To be honest, I feel like more people were drinking coffee and hot water because we were so cold," she added. "I don't even think I finished one drink the whole night, and also, we were warned that [filming] really does last all night and you want to make sure to stay awake. So they were not forcing us with drinks. If anything, it was definitely coffee and water."

'The Bachelor' Season 22: Meet Arie Luyendyk Jr.'s Bachelorettes!

Michael Garofola, who competed on Desiree Hartstock's Bachelorette season, weighed in on the show's drinking policies during an exclusive interview with Us in June. "Despite what people think, producers are not holding your hair back and dumping bottles of tequila down your thrown," he explained, noting that the producers are respectful of all contestants' drink of choices, whether it be coffee, water, tequila or the likes.

Host Chris Harrison echoed Garofola's remarks while speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in July. "As far as alcohol goes, that's never been a big thing for us. That's a big misconception of the show - that we push it and that we need it and we want it," he said. "But that really doesn't help us. Someone being sloppy drunk and being out of it does not give us good television."

Biggest 'Bachelor' and 'Bachelorette' Villains

The Bachelor airs Mondays on ABC at 8 p.m. ET.

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Why There's Less Alcohol on This Season of 'The Bachelor'

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The Bachelor season 22 premiered on Monday, January 1, and fans of the ABC dating series noticed that contestants weren't indulging in copious amounts of champagne, as they have in previous seasons.

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What really goes on behind the scenes on The Bachelor

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Photo illustration by Tracy Ma/The New York Times; Arie Luyendyk Jr.: ABC/Craig Sjodin

There are two ways to watch " The Bachelor."

The first is, in "Bachelor" parlance, to be swept away on the "journey" and suspend any disbelief that suitors are "here for the right reasons." For most viewers, though, the only way to sit through a two-hour episode is to accept the polyamorous spectacle as one big social experiment.

It's hard to imagine that the millions of intelligent women (and men) who tune into the show are sold on its premise. Yet many of them consumed six hours of "Bachelor" programming per week this month. That's not including the time they spent reading recaps, listening to "Bachelor"-adjacent podcasts or scrolling through contestants' Instagram feeds.

Just as the internet can act as a (very dangerous) political echo chamber, it can also function as a "Bachelor" hall of mirrors, wherein the franchise's offshoots become unavoidable. In turn, immersing oneself in Bachelor Nation can be accidental.

Arie Luyendyk Jr., a racecar driver turned real estate agent, may soon pick a fiancée on television, after narrowing a pool of mostly white 20-somethings on Season 22 to three women. In the season premiere there were four Laurens; now we're down to one. There was a "Bachelor" first: a woman with a pixie cut.

The lack of diversity isn't new. The first African-American lead, Rachel Lindsay, was cast in 2017, a whopping 15 years after "The Bachelor" had its premiere.

On NPR, Linda Holmes described the franchise as a metaphor for white privilege: Talent hops from one "Bachelor" program to another. It's "a story almost entirely of a white person picking the next white person," she said, "and of that white person then picking another white person, and everybody shrugging and saying, 'I just went with my gut!'"

I'm late to watching this season, but I can't say I missed much. "The Bachelor" is a self-sustaining ecosystem with few surprises.

Social media has only made the show easier to spin off. While it's live on television, the "Bachelor" faithful go on Twitter to analyze the relationships and dissect manipulation by producers. Watching the commentary can be more fun than watching the show.

And then there's Instagram. I tap through photos, starting with the fan favorite Ashley Iaconetti, known as "Crying Girl." The list of accounts she follows is a pipeline of "Bachelor" contestants, and I absent-mindedly burn through 45 minutes.

Here, the contestants gain what they seem to have auditioned for: internet fame. Many alumni pepper their feeds with sponsored content, advertisements for products that purport to improve lives: the meal kit delivery service HelloFresh, "detox" concoctions like Flat Tummy Tea, whatever a FabFitFun box is.

Then I read "Bachelor" blogs en route to the taping of another podcast, "Here to Make Friends," produced by HuffPost. The hosts, Emma Gray and Claire Fallon, spend about an hour recapping an episode with Caila Quinn, a contestant envied for her bouncy, shiny hair.

Ms. Quinn, a focal point of misleading editing on the spinoff "Bachelor in Paradise," is reserved and gracious, and asks if I'd like to wear her faux-fur coat for a photo. As she helps me into each sleeve, I silently acknowledge that I am the kind of person who is a bit star-struck by reality television personalities.

I ask the hosts why we binge on "The Bachelor."

The 24-hour news cycle is overwhelming, Ms. Gray says, so there's something very satisfying about watching a show based in an alternate reality. "The stakes feel high, but they're actually low."

The franchise is also appealing, Ms. Fallon says, because it taps into our basic desire for human connection. It's nice to imagine that love can be this simple.

The content never ends. The limit does not exist.

If a woman for some reason wants to be on "The Bachelor," she can fill out an application that relies largely on photos and video. The Season 16 winner, Courtney Robertson, advises women to "save producers time by wearing a bikini in the photo."

That reminds me: It's time for my "Bachelor" workout. Exercises are tied to episode plot points. A date card shows up: 10 jumping jacks. The Bachelor kisses a woman: 10 mountain climbers.

Feeling uninspired, I switch to Krystal Nielson's YouTube channel for an 18-minute total body workout.

Ms. Nielson is the villain on Mr. Luyendyk's season, so America doesn't like her. Eleven minutes in, I dislike her, too. I'm out of breath. My legs are on fire, but they're still not hot enough to lounge poolside at Villa de la Vina, better known as the "Bachelor" mansion.

Stephen Carbone is a thorn in ABC's side. Mr. Carbone has run the website RealitySteve.com for years, and since Season 13 of "The Bachelor" he has spoiled the show's endings.

He now records a weekly podcast too, and holds an annual fan appreciation party at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. The show's creators do not acknowledge Mr. Carbone, aside from threatening him with legal action.

But what would they say if they did? "They can't say, 'That guy doesn't know what he's talking about,'" Mr. Carbone says. And "they can't say, 'Oh, he's right.'"

Would Mr. Carbone call himself a fan? "The fun part for me is while it's filming and spoiling it while it's happening." When he watches in retrospect, he says, "I can't believe anything out of these people's mouths."

It's hard to trust what contestants say on camera because editors can recut dialogue and interviews using a trade technique known as "frankenbiting." Amy Kaufman, a Los Angeles Times reporter and the author of " Bachelor Nation," knows all about this. For the book, she consulted former producers and contestants who told all, including the following:

Sleep-deprived or intoxicated contestants are taken into a sort of solitary confinement for questioning. Some say what the producer wants simply to end an interview.

Chris Bukowski, a five-time contestant, was pressured to propose to a woman he didn't like very much. (He didn't go through with it.)

Clare Crawley, a four-time contestant, was made to appear as if she confided in a raccoon.

"I wouldn't advise the smartest, most independent-minded friend I have to come on this show," she says. "I don't think you can control what happens."

Sean O'Leary is part of a "Bachelor" fantasy league, in which he and 20 co-workers at a public relations firm in Virginia try to predict the semi-predictable. The participants choose contestants they think will advance to the next episode. Bragging rights, and maybe a gift card, are at stake.

The brackets are taped to a conference room wall, Mr. O'Leary says: "Most people when they visit the office, it's the first thing they notice."

Adam Hoover's league is a tad more complicated. Like the N.F.L., "The Bachelor" has its own language: First impression rose. One-on-ones. Hometowns. Fantasy suites. Points are awarded for all in Mr. Hoover's league, which he and his wife run with another couple.

"At the end of every season, we say if so-and-so is the Bachelor, we might not do this again," Mr. Hoover says. "And we always do."

I serve contestant-endorsed cheese pasta and cheese pizza, along with plenty of wine, to my "Bachelor" support group, which has convened for the premiere of "The Bachelor Winter Games."

" UnReal," a Lifetime drama that takes place behind the scenes of a "Bachelor" look-alike called "Everlasting," was a show I'd never watched until now. It focuses on the manipulation contestants endure at the hands of producers and exaggerates what we see in the "Bachelor" franchise, but not beyond recognition.

Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, a co-creator of "UnReal," was a producer of "The Bachelor." Part of her job during that time, she told The New Yorker, was to get contestants to "open up, and to give them terrible advice, and to deprive them of sleep."

"Bachelor" contestants aren't allowed to read while filming. A former contestant, Ashley Spivey, said that producers confiscated her copy of "Life of Pi" even before cameras were rolling. Now she runs a 6,000-person book club on Facebook.

Currently, the club's members are reading "An American Marriage," by Tayari Jones, but Ms. Spivey suggested that I break up my "Bachelor"-thon with "The Light We Lost," which explores a relationship shaped by outside events: a love story nothing like "The Bachelor."

After an hour of blissful escapism, I turn the "Bachelor" switch back on and crack open "Single State of Mind," by the former contestant Andi Dorfman. I can't relate to much in Ms. Dorfman's book about post-reality-TV life, but I laugh when she is shocked to learn, while apartment hunting, that for one place in the West Village, she must earn 90 times the monthly rent. Welcome to New York, Ms. Dorfman.

I am at the zenith of Bachelor Nation, but I have 27 think pieces and a parody called "Burning Love" on my agenda.

I'll save delving into an on-set sexual misconduct allegation for another day, because that deserves the kind of thought and attention that is rarely present past midnight.

It occurs to me that if I sleep, I may dream about "The Bachelor," and that technically I'd be consuming "Bachelor" content.

I have a nightmare about writing this article.

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There are two ways to watch " The Bachelor." The first is, in "Bachelor" parlance, to be swept away on the "journey" and suspend any disbelief that suitors are "here for the right reasons." For most viewers, though, the only way to sit through a two-hour episode is to accept the polyamorous spectacle as one big social experiment.

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How reality TV puts on an unrealistic show.

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Credit Credit Kelsey Dake

I've spent a lot of time since Nov. 8 wondering how Donald J. Trump happened, and whether any part of his vindictive, chaotic and xenophobic presidency might, in some small way, be my fault.

I didn't vote for him. I didn't contribute to his campaign. I didn't attend his rallies or secretly wear a "Make America Great Again" hat.

However, I did do one thing, consistently, even obsessively, for the past decade and a half that I think might have played a part in where we find ourselves today.

I watched - and live-tweeted - "The Bachelor."

For those who don't know the show, which will end its 21st season on Monday, the premise is simple: A single man is presented with a smorgasbord of women to date for the following several weeks. Each weekend ends with a "rose ceremony," in which the women who get to continue on the show are handed flowers, and those left roseless are sent packing. By the season finale, two women remain. One gets an engagement ring; the other goes home, ugly-crying in the back seat of a limousine, knowing that maybe she won't be alone forever - the network could tap her to star in the spinoff, "The Bachelorette."

I know what you're thinking: "The Bachelor" wasn't even the reality show that our president was on!

But I submit that "The Bachelor" did the Republicans' work for them, helping to prime America for its current leader.

It showed us how men treat, and talk about, women, and one another. It demonstrated that you don't have to be the best, the kindest, the smartest or the most virtuous to stay in the competition. You just have to be the most interesting, and the producers will keep you around. It helped lull us into a false sense of security, that we could treat an election like a show; that everything on TV is entertainment and everyone on my screen is there to amuse.

And oh, was "The Bachelor" amusing, while being flagrantly problematic. Everyone was young and attractive. Almost everyone was white. There were bad boys and mean girls; studs and sluts. Insults were flung. Grammar was shredded (I still cringe at the memory of every "hers and my's relationship" I heard over the years). I live-tweeted the whole thing, along with a gleeful community of other hate-watchers who'd call out the show's icky sexual politics and double standards, then hold our breath at the proposal point, and weep along with the winners.

Each season's conclusion would leave me bereft. Where are my villains? Where are my heroes? Where's the story to engross me? Where's the grammatically challenged, preening macho dope for me to make fun of now?

The summer of 2015 gave viewers a new answer, something much more appealing than the low-budget and notably un-air-conditioned spinoff "Bachelor in Paradise." There was a hot new show in town, an all-you-can-eat buffet full of conflict and controversy, insults and eliminations. A program that felt as familiar - and as fun - as watching a bunch of bachelorettes in bikinis sitting in a hot tub and fighting over a man.

As on "The Bachelor," women were objectified and mocked.

Sure, we were all shocked to learn that Mr. Trump taunted his female executives and beauty queens about their weight. We were appalled when he took to Twitter to continue to bash the one-time Miss Universe Alicia Machado. We clutched our pearls at Billy Bush and Mr. Trump chortling over the soap opera actress Arianne Zucker's body as if it were a box lunch the producers had provided. Except how shocked could we really have been?

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A scene from season 21 of "The Bachelor." Credit Rick Rowell/ABC, via Getty Images

Old-school gender roles, constant objectification, the notion that men are superior to women are all baked deep into reality TV DNA. Shows have cast men accused of domestic violence as romantic leads (see Rick Rockwell, of "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?") and played violence against women for laughs (how about that "Jersey Shore" promo that teased Snooki getting punched in the face during a bar fight?). Mr. Trump's bombshells might have landed harder without reality TV inuring us to all that lady-hate.

While "The Bachelor" made trash-talking part of the game, even the jerkiest bachelor had nothing on Mr. Trump, who assigned his fellow candidates demeaning and somehow perfect nicknames, tweeted unflattering memes about a competitor's wife, said unflattering things about another's looks and mocked a third by flailing around onstage with a water bottle.

Those antics paid off, to the tune of an estimated $5 billion worth of free media. The chief executive of CBS, Les Moonves, said that Mr. Trump's candidacy "may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."

It helped that Mr. Trump himself was a creature of the reality TV world.

When he switched his focus from NBC's "The Apprentice" to the United States' election, Mr. Trump knew that he was essentially moving from one show to another. He also understood that social media had flattened the once crucial distinctions between "politician" and "entertainer," and turned viewing into a participatory sport, where it almost didn't matter what viewers were snarking about, whether it was a politician or a pop star, a political convention or an episode of "After the Final Rose."

For months, my fellow reality TV fans and I watched and tweeted, appalled and enthralled, as Mr. Trump went after Mexicans and Muslims, war heroes and Gold Star families; bashing beauty queens and retweeting anti-Semitic memes while still staying in the hunt.

I wasn't worried. It still felt like a program, and on my programs, justice always prevails. The jerk or the mean girl sometimes overstays his or her welcome, kept on by producers who know that drama means ratings, but they'd always be gone by the week of hometown dates. Mr. Trump, similarly, would never win. I'd watched enough reality TV to be sure of it.

On Election Day, I stood in the voting booth with my daughters. I had no doubt about which lever I'd pull, and no doubt about who'd emerge as the victor. Most of me was happy. A tiny part was regretful. A Hillary Clinton presidency would be historic, but, Lord, a Trump presidency would be insanely fun to watch.

Be careful what you wish for. "Are you not entertained?" Alec Baldwin, in character as the president, growled at the camera on "Saturday Night Live." While I'd use a different word - one like "terrified" - the Trump presidency is, indeed, must-see TV, with one crazy plot twist after the next.

Maybe President Trump will implode. Maybe he'll be impeached. What's certain is that we, the viewers and the voters, need to redraw the line between entertainment and politics, between producer-crafted reality-TV narratives and actual reality.

Candidate Trump was - let's all just admit it - riveting. President Trump is a disaster; a Frankenstein monster animated in some subterranean alt-right lab. Even those of us who didn't support him might have played a part in his victory by watching the shows that normalized his behavior and helping to make the social-media lightning that brought him to life.

I'm doing my part to make amends. This year, I've broken up with "The Bachelor." I miss it, but in a post-Trump world, it doesn't feel entertaining. Or maybe it's that I don't think I can allow myself the luxury of escape, not after six weeks of seeing what happens when a made-for-TV candidate stops being polite and starts being real.

Jennifer Weiner is the author, most recently, of the memoir "Hungry Heart" and a contributing opinion writer.

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Opinion | Breaking Up With 'The Bachelor'

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I've spent a lot of time since Nov. 8 wondering how Donald J. Trump happened, and whether any part of his vindictive, chaotic and xenophobic presidency might, in some small way, be my fault. I didn't vote for him. I didn't contribute to his campaign.