title: Asian Americans

text: Asian Americans were once a strong constituency for Republicans. In 1992, George H.W. Bush won 55% of Asian voters. However, by 2020, Asian Americans shifted to supporting Democrats, giving Joe Biden 70% support to Donald Trump's 29%. Ethnic background and country of origin have determined Asian American voting behavior in recent elections, with Indian Americans and to a lesser extent Chinese Americans being strong constituencies for Democrats, and Vietnamese Americans being a strong constituency for Republicans.


title: Asian Americans

text: Connie Chung was one of the first Asian American national correspondents for a major TV news network, reporting for CBS in 1971. She later co-anchored the "CBS Evening News" from 1993 to 1995, becoming the first Asian American national news anchor. At ABC, Ken Kashiwahara began reporting nationally in 1974. In 1989, Emil Guillermo, a Filipino American born reporter from San Francisco, became the first Asian American male to co-host a national news show when he was senior host at National Public Radio's "All Things Considered". In 1990, Sheryl WuDunn, a foreign correspondent in the Beijing Bureau of "The New York Times", became the first Asian American to win a Pulitzer Prize. Ann Curry joined NBC News as a reporter in 1990, later becoming prominently associated with "The Today Show" in 1997. Carol Lin is perhaps best known for being the first to break the news of 9-11 on CNN. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is currently CNN's chief health correspondent. Lisa Ling, a former co-host on "The View", now provides special reports for CNN and "The Oprah Winfrey Show", as well as hosting National Geographic Channel's "Explorer." Fareed Zakaria, a naturalized Indian-born immigrant, is a prominent journalist and author specializing in international affairs. He is the editor-at-large of Time magazine, and the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN. Juju Chang, James Hatori, John Yang, Veronica De La Cruz, Michelle Malkin, Betty Nguyen, and Julie Chen have become familiar faces on television news. John Yang won a Peabody Award. Alex Tizon, a Seattle Times staff writer, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997.


title: Asian Americans

text: Since the War of 1812, Asian Americans have served and fought on behalf of the United States. Serving in both segregated and non-segregated units until the desegregation of the US Military in 1948, 31 have been awarded the nation's highest award for combat valor, the Medal of Honor. Twenty-one of these were conferred upon members of the mostly Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team of World War II, the most highly decorated unit of its size in the history of the United States Armed Forces. The highest ranked Asian American military official was Secretary of Veteran Affairs, four-star general and Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki.


title: Asian Americans

text: Asian Americans have contributed to sports in the United States through much of the 20th Century. Some of the most notable contributions include Olympic sports, but also in professional sports, particularly in the post-World War II years. As the Asian American population grew in the late 20th century, Asian American contributions expanded to more sports. Examples of female Asian American athletes include Michelle Kwan, Chloe Kim, Miki Gorman, Mirai Nagasu, and Maia Shibutani. Examples of male Asian American athletes include Jeremy Lin, Tiger Woods, Hines Ward, Richard Park, and Nathan Adrian.


title: Asian Americans

text: In recognition of the unique culture, traditions, and history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, the United States government has permanently designated the month of May to be Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Asian American parenting as seen through relationships between Chinese parents and adolescence, which is described as being more authoritarian and less warm than relations between European parents and adolescence, has become a topic of study and discussion. These influences affect how parents regulate and monitor their children, and has been described as Tiger parenting, and has received interest and curiosity from non Chinese parents.


title: Asian Americans

text: Asian immigrants are also changing the American medical landscape through increasing number of Asian medical practitioners in the United States. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, the US government invited a number of foreign physicians particularly from India and the Philippines to address the shortage of physicians in rural and medically underserved urban areas. The trend in importing foreign medical practitioners, however, became a long-term solution as US schools failed to produce enough health care providers to match the increasing population. Amid decreasing interest in medicine among American college students due to high educational costs and high rates of job dissatisfaction, loss of morale, stress, and lawsuits, Asian American immigrants maintained a supply of healthcare practitioners for millions of Americans. It is documented that Asian American international medical graduates including highly skilled guest workers using the J1 Visa program for medical workers, tend to serve in health professions shortage areas (HPSA) and specialties that are not filled by US medical graduates especially primary care and rural medicine. In 2020, of all the medical personnel in the United States, 17% of doctors were Asian Americans, 9% of physician assistants were Asian American, and more than 9% of nurses were Asian Americans.


title: Asian Americans

text: Nearly one in four Asian Americans are likely to use common alternative medicine. This includes Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda. Due to the prevalence of usage, engaging with Asian American populations, through the practitioners of these common alternative medicines, can lead to an increase of usage of underused medical procedures.


title: Asian Americans

text: Among America's major racial categories, Asian Americans have the highest educational qualifications. This varies, however, for individual ethnic groups. For example, a 2010 study of all Asian American adults found 42% have at least a college degree, but only 16% of Vietnamese Americans and only 5% for Laotians and Cambodians. It has been noted, however, that 2008 US Census statistics put the bachelor's degree attainment rate of Vietnamese Americans at 26%, which is not very different from the rate of 27% for all Americans. Census data from 2010 show 50% of Asian adults have earned at least a bachelor's degree, compared to 28% for all Americans, and 34% for non-Hispanic whites. Taiwanese Americans have some of the highest education rates, with nearly 74% having attained at least a bachelor's degree in 2010. Asian Americans made up twelve to eighteen percent of the student population at Ivy League schools, larger than their share of the population. For example, the Harvard College Class of 2023 admitted students were 25% Asian American.


title: Asian Americans

text: In the years immediately preceding 2012, 61% of Asian American adult immigrants have a bachelor or higher level college education.


title: Asian Americans

text: In August 2020, the US Justice Department argued that Yale University discriminated against Asian candidates on the basis of their race, a charge the university denied.


title: Asian Americans

text: Because Asian Americans total about 7.2% of the entire US population, diversity within the group is often overlooked in media treatment.


title: Asian Americans

text: This concept appears to elevate Asian Americans by portraying them as an elite group of successful, highly educated, intelligent, and wealthy individuals, but it can also be considered an overly narrow and overly one-dimensional portrayal of Asian Americans, leaving out other human qualities such as vocal leadership, negative emotions, risk taking, ability to learn from mistakes, and desire for creative expression. Furthermore, Asian Americans who do not fit into the model minority mold can face challenges when people's expectations based on the model minority myth do not match with reality. Traits outside of the model minority mold can be seen as negative character flaws for Asian Americans despite those very same traits being positive for the general American majority (e.g., risk taking, confidence, empowered). For this reason, Asian Americans encounter a "bamboo ceiling", the Asian American equivalent of the glass ceiling in the workplace, with only 1.5% of Fortune 500 CEOs being Asians, a percentage smaller than their percentage of the total United States population.


title: Asian Americans

text: The bamboo ceiling is defined as a combination of individual, cultural, and organisational factors that impede Asian Americans' career progress inside organizations. Since then, a variety of sectors (including nonprofits, universities, the government) have discussed the impact of the ceiling as it relates to Asians and the challenges they face. As described by Anne Fisher, the "bamboo ceiling" refers to the processes and barriers that serve to exclude Asians and American people of Asian descent from executive positions on the basis of subjective factors such as "lack of leadership potential" and "lack of communication skills" that cannot actually be explained by job performance or qualifications. Articles regarding the subject have been published in "Crains", "Fortune" magazine, and "The Atlantic".


title: Asian Americans

text: In 2012, there were 1.3 million Asian Americans; and for those awaiting visas, there were lengthy backlogs with over 450,000 Filipinos, over 325,000 Indians, over 250,000 Vietnamese, and over 225,000 Chinese awaiting visas. As of 2009, Filipinos and Indians accounted for the highest number of alien immigrants for "Asian Americans" with an estimated illegal population of 270,000 and 200,000 respectively. Indian Americans are also the fastest-growing alien immigrant group in the United States, with an increase in illegal immigration of 125% since 2000. This is followed by Koreans (200,000) and Chinese (120,000). Nonetheless, Asian Americans have the highest naturalization rates in the United States. In 2015, out of a total of 730,259 applicants, 261,374 became new Americans. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, legal permanent residents or green card holders from India, Philippines, and China were among the top nationals applying for U.S. naturalization in 2015.


title: Asian Americans

text: Due to the stereotype of Asian Americans being successful as a group and having the lowest crime rates in the United States, public attention to illegal immigration is mostly focused on those from Mexico and Latin America while leaving out Asians. Asians are the second largest racial/ethnic alien immigrant group in the U.S. behind Hispanics and Latinos. While the majority of Asian immigrants immigrate legally to the United States, up to 15% of Asian immigrants immigrate without legal documents.


title: Asian Americans

text: Asian Americans have been the targets of violence based on their race and or ethnicity. This violence includes, but is not limited to, such events as the Rock Springs massacre, Watsonville Riots, Bellingham Riots in 1916 against South Asians, attacks upon Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Korean American businesses targeted during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Attacks on Chinese in the American frontier were common. This included the slaughter of forty to sixty Chinese miners by Paiute Indians in 1866, during the Snake War, the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871, and an attack on Chinese miners at the Chinese Massacre Cove by cowboys in 1887 which resulted in 31 deaths. In the late 1980s, assaults and other hate crimes were committed against South Asians in New Jersey by a group of Latinos who were known as the Dotbusters. In the late 1990s, the lone death that occurred during the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting by a white supremacist was a Filipino postal worker. On July 17, 1989, Patrick Edward Purdy, a drifter and former resident of Stockton, California, wen and opened fire on Cleveland Elementary School students in the playground who were mainly of southeast Asian descent. Within minutes, he fired dozens of rounds, although reports ranged. He was armed with two pistols and an AK-47 with a bayonet killing five students and shooting at least 37 others. After the shooting spree Purdy killed himself.


title: Asian Americans

text: Even when it did not manifest as violence, contempt against Asian Americans was reflected in aspects of popular culture such as the playground chant "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees".


title: Asian Americans

text: After the September 11 attacks, Sikh Americans were targeted, becoming the victims of numerous hate crimes, including murder. Other Asian Americans have also been the victims of race-based violence in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Bloomington, Indiana. Furthermore, it has been reported that young Asian Americans are more likely to be the targets of violence than their peers. In 2017, racist graffiti and other property damage was done to a community center in Stockton's Little Manila. Racism and discrimination still persist against Asian Americans, occurring not only against recent immigrants but also against well-educated and highly trained professionals.


title: Asian Americans

text: Recent waves of immigration of Asian Americans to largely African American neighborhoods have led to cases of severe racial tension. Acts of large-scale violence against Asian American students by their black classmates have been reported in multiple cities. In October 2008, 30 black students chased and attacked 5 Asian students at South Philadelphia High School, and a similar attack on Asian students occurred at the same school one year later, prompting a protest by Asian students in response.


title: Asian Americans

text: Asian-owned businesses have been a frequent target of tensions between black and Asian Americans. During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, more than 2000 Korean-owned businesses were looted or burned by groups of African Americans. From 1990 to 1991, a high-profile, racially motivated boycott of an Asian-owned shop in Brooklyn was organized by a local black nationalist activist, eventually resulting in the owner being forced to sell his business. Another racially motivated boycott against an Asian-owned business occurred in Dallas in 2012, after an Asian American clerk fatally shot an African American who had robbed his store. During the Ferguson unrest in 2014, Asian-owned businesses were looted, and Asian-owned stores were looted during the 2015 Baltimore protests while African-American owned stores were bypassed. Violence against Asian Americans continue to occur based on their race, with one source asserting that Asian Americans are the fastest-growing targets of hate crimes and violence.


title: Asian Americans

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, concern has grown due to an increase in anti-Asian sentiment in the United States. In March 2020, President Donald Trump called the disease "China Virus" and "Kung-Flu", based on its origin; in response organizations such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Western States Center, stated that doing so will increase anti-Asian sentiment and violence. "Vox" wrote that the Trump Administration's use of the terms "China Virus", "Kung-Flu", and "Wuhan virus" would lead to an increase in xenophobia. The disease naming controversy occurred at a time when the Chinese Foreign Ministry was claiming that the disease originated in the United States. Violent acts, relating to the disease, against Asian Americans have been documented mostly in New York, California, and elsewhere. As of December 31, 2020, there were 259 reports of anti-Asian incidents in New York reported to Stop AAPI Hate. As of March 2021, there have been more than 3800 anti-Asian racist incidents. A notable incident was the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, a fatal attack in which six of the eight casualties were of Asian descent. The shooter reportedly said "I'm going to kill all Asians."


title: Asian Americans

text: Until the late 20th century, the term "Asian American" was mostly adopted by activists, while the average person who was of Asian ancestry identified with his or her specific ethnicity. The murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 was a pivotal civil rights case, and it marked the emergence of Asian Americans as a distinct group in United States.


title: Asian Americans

text: Stereotypes of Asians have largely been collectively internalized by society and most of the repercussions of these stereotypes are negative for Asian Americans and Asian immigrants in daily interactions, current events, and governmental legislation. In many instances, media portrayals of East Asians often reflect a dominant Americentric perception rather than realistic and authentic depictions of true cultures, customs and behaviors. Asians have experienced discrimination and have been victims of hate crimes related to their ethnic stereotypes.


title: Asian Americans

text: A study has indicated that most non-Asian Americans generally do not differentiate between Asian Americans who are of different ethnicities. Stereotypes of Chinese Americans and Asian Americans are nearly identical. A 2002 survey of Americans' attitudes toward Asian Americans and Chinese Americans indicated that 24% of the respondents disapprove of intermarriage with an Asian American, second only to African Americans; 23% would be uncomfortable supporting an Asian American presidential candidate, compared to 15% for an African American, 14% for a woman and 11% for a Jew; 17% would be upset if a substantial number of Asian Americans moved into their neighborhood; 25% had somewhat or very negative attitude toward Chinese Americans in general. The study did find several positive perceptions of Chinese Americans: strong family values (91%); honesty as business people (77%); high value on education (67%).


title: Asian Americans

text: There is a widespread perception that Asian Americans are not "American" but are instead "perpetual foreigners". Asian Americans often report being asked the question, "Where are you really from?" by other Americans, regardless of how long they or their ancestors have lived in United States and been a part of its society. Many Asian Americans are themselves not immigrants but rather born in the United States. Many East Asian Americans are asked if they are Chinese or Japanese, an assumption based on major groups of past immigrants.


title: Asian Americans

text: Discrimination against Asians and Asian Americans increased with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, according to a study done at Washington State University (WSU) and published in "Stigma and Health". The NYPD reported a 1,900% increase in hate crimes motivated by anti-Asian sentiment in 2020, largely due to the virus origins in Wuhan, China.


title: Asian Americans

text: According to a poll done in 2022, 33 percent of Americans believe Asian Americans are "more loyal to their country of origin" than the US while 21 percent falsely believe Asian Americans are at least "partially responsible" for the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, only 29 percent of Asian Americans believe they "completely agree" with the statement that they feel they belong and are accepted in the US, while 71 percent say they are discriminated in the US.


title: Asian Americans

text: Asian Americans are sometimes characterized as a model minority in the United States because many of their cultures encourage a strong work ethic, a respect for elders, a high degree of professional and academic success, a high valuation of family, education and religion. Statistics such as high household income and low incarceration rate, low rates of many diseases, and higher than average life expectancy are also discussed as positive aspects of Asian Americans.


title: Asian Americans

text: The implicit advice is that the other minorities should stop protesting and emulate the Asian American work ethic and devotion to higher education. Some critics say the depiction replaces biological racism with cultural racism, and should be dropped. According to "The Washington Post", "the idea that Asian Americans are distinct among minority groups and immune to the challenges faced by other people of color is a particularly sensitive issue for the community, which has recently fought to reclaim its place in social justice conversations with movements like #ModelMinorityMutiny."


title: Asian Americans

text: The model minority concept can also affect Asians' public education. By comparison with other minorities, Asians often achieve higher test scores and grades compared to other Americans. Stereotyping Asian American as over-achievers can lead to harm if school officials or peers expect all to perform higher than average. The very high educational attainments of Asian Americans has often been noted; in 1980, for example, 74% of Chinese Americans, 62% of Japanese Americans, and 55% of Korean Americans aged 20–21 were in college, compared to only a third of the whites. The disparity at postgraduate levels is even greater, and the differential is especially notable in fields making heavy use of mathematics. By 2000, a plurality of undergraduates at such elite public California schools as UC Berkeley and UCLA, which are obligated by law to not consider race as a factor in admission, were Asian American. The pattern is rooted in the pre-World War II era. Native-born Chinese and Japanese Americans reached educational parity with majority whites in the early decades of the 20th century. One group of writers who discuss the "model minority" stereotype, have taken to attaching the term "myth" after "model minority", thus encouraging discourse regarding how the concept and stereotype is harmful to Asian American communities and ethnic groups.


title: Asian Americans

text: The model minority concept can be emotionally damaging to some Asian Americans, particularly since they are expected to live up to those peers who fit the stereotype. Studies have shown that some Asian Americans suffer from higher rates of stress, depression, mental illnesses, and suicides in comparison to other groups, indicating that the pressures to achieve and live up to the model minority image may take a mental and psychological toll on some Asian Americans. The American Psychological Association has published a paper relying on 2007 data that takes issue with what is says are myths about the suicide rates of Asian Americans.


title: Asian Americans

text: The "model minority" stereotype fails to distinguish between different ethnic groups with different histories. When divided up by ethnicity, it can be seen that the economic and academic successes supposedly enjoyed by Asian Americans are concentrated into a few ethnic groups. Cambodians, Hmong, and Laotians (and to a lesser extent, Vietnamese) all have relatively low achievement rates, possibly due to their refugee status, and the fact that they are non-voluntary immigrants.


title: Asian Americans

text: In 2015, Asian American earnings were found to exceed all other racial groups when all Asian ethnic groups are grouped as a whole. Yet, a 2014 report from the Census Bureau reported that 12% of Asian Americans were living below the poverty line, while 10.1% of non-Hispanic White Americans live below the poverty line. A 2017 study of wealth inequality within Asian Americans found a greater gap between wealthy and non-wealthy Asian Americans compared to non-Hispanic white Americans. Once country of birth and other demographic factors are taken into account, a portion of the sub-groups that make up Asian Americans are much more likely than non-Hispanic White Americans to live in poverty.


title: Asian Americans

text: There are major disparities that exist among Asian Americans when specific ethnic groups are examined. For example, in 2012, Asian Americans had the highest educational attainment level of any racial demographic in the country. Yet, there are many sub groups of Asian Americans who suffer in terms of education with some sub groups showing a high rate of dropping out of school or lacking a college education. This occurs in terms of household income as well – in 2008 Asian Americans had the highest median household income overall of any racial demographic, while there were Asian sub-groups who had average median incomes lower than both the U.S. average and non-Hispanic Whites. In 2014, data released by the United States Census Bureau revealed that 5 Asian American ethnic groups are in the top 10 lowest earning ethnicities in terms of per capita income in all of the United States.


title: Asian Americans

text: The Asian American groups that have low educational attainment and high rates of poverty both in average individual and median income are Bhutanese Americans, Bangladeshi Americans, Cambodian Americans, Burmese Americans, Nepali Americans, Hmong Americans, and Laotian Americans. This affects Vietnamese Americans as well, albeit to a lesser degree, as early 21st century immigration from Vietnam are almost entirely not from refugee backgrounds. These individual ethnicities experience social issues within their communities, some specific to their individual communities themselves. Issues such as suicide, crime, and mental illness. Other issues experienced include deportation, and poor physical health. Within the Bhutanese American community, it has been documented that there are issues of suicide greater than the world's average. Cambodian Americans, some of whom immigrated as refugees, are subject to deportation. Crime and gang violence are common social issues among Asian Americans of refugee backgrounds such as Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, and Vietnamese Americans.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Elie Wiesel (, born Eliezer Wiesel "Eliezer Vizel"; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including "Night", a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. C. In his political activities, he also campaigned for victims of oppression in places like South Africa, Nicaragua, Kosovo, and Sudan. He publicly condemned the 1915 Armenian genocide and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He was described as "the most important Jew in America" by the "Los Angeles Times" in 2003.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind", stating that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel delivered a message "of peace, atonement, and human dignity" to humanity. The Nobel Committee also stressed that Wiesel's commitment originated in the sufferings of the Jewish people but that he expanded it to embrace all repressed peoples and races. He was a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active in it throughout his life.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet (now Sighetu Marmației), Maramureș, in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. His parents were Sarah Feig and Shlomo Wiesel. At home, Wiesel's family spoke Yiddish most of the time, but also German, Hungarian, and Romanian. Wiesel's mother, Sarah, was the daughter of Dodye Feig, a Vizhnitz Hasid and farmer from the nearby village of Bocskó. Dodye was active and trusted within the community.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel's father, Shlomo, instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother encouraged him to study the Torah. Wiesel has said his father represented reason, while his mother Sarah promoted faith. Wiesel was instructed that his genealogy traced back to Rabbi Schlomo Yitzhaki (Rashi), and was a descendant of Rabbi Yeshayahu ben Abraham Horovitz ha-Levi.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel had three siblings—older sisters Beatrice and Hilda, and younger sister Tzipora. Beatrice and Hilda survived the war, and were reunited with Wiesel at a French orphanage. They eventually emigrated to North America, with Beatrice moving to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Tzipora, Shlomo, and Sarah did not survive the Holocaust.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary, thus extending the Holocaust into Northern Transylvania as well. Wiesel was 15, and he, with his family, along with the rest of the town's Jewish population, was placed in one of the two confinement ghettos set up in Máramarossziget (Sighet), the town where he had been born and raised. In May 1944, the Hungarian authorities, under German pressure, began to deport the Jewish community to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where up to 90 percent of the people were killed on arrival.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Immediately after they were sent to Auschwitz, his mother and his younger sister were murdered. Wiesel and his father were selected to perform labor so long as they remained able-bodied, after which they were to be killed in the gas chambers. Wiesel and his father were later deported to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Until that transfer, he admitted to Oprah Winfrey, his primary motivation for trying to survive Auschwitz was knowing that his father was still alive: "I knew that if I died, he would die." After they were taken to Buchenwald, his father died before the camp was liberated. In "Night", Wiesel recalled the shame he felt when he heard his father being beaten and was unable to help.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel was tattooed with inmate number "A-7713" on his left arm. The camp was liberated by the U.S. Third Army on April 11, 1945, when they were just prepared to be evacuated from Buchenwald.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: After World War II ended and Wiesel was freed, he joined a transport of 1,000 child survivors of Buchenwald to Ecouis, France, where the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) had established a rehabilitation center. Wiesel joined a smaller group of 90 to 100 boys from Orthodox homes who wanted kosher facilities and a higher level of religious observance; they were cared for in a home in Ambloy under the directorship of Judith Hemmendinger. This home was later moved to Taverny and operated until 1947.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Afterwards, Wiesel traveled to Paris where he learned French and studied literature, philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne. He heard lectures by philosopher Martin Buber and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and he spent his evenings reading works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Mann.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: By the time he was 19, he had begun working as a journalist, writing in French, while also teaching Hebrew and working as a choirmaster. He wrote for Israeli and French newspapers, including "Tsien in Kamf" (in Yiddish).


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 1946, after learning of the Irgun's bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, Wiesel made an unsuccessful attempt to join the underground Zionist movement. In 1948, he translated articles from Hebrew into Yiddish for Irgun periodicals, but never became a member of the organization. In 1949, he traveled to Israel as a correspondent for the French newspaper "L'arche". He then was hired as Paris correspondent for the Israeli newspaper "Yedioth Ahronoth", subsequently becoming its roaming international correspondent.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: For ten years after the war, Wiesel refused to write about or discuss his experiences during the Holocaust. He began to reconsider his decision after a meeting with the French author François Mauriac, the 1952 Nobel Laureate in Literature who eventually became Wiesel's close friend. Mauriac was a devout Christian who had fought in the French Resistance during the war. He compared Wiesel to "Lazarus rising from the dead", and saw from Wiesel's tormented eyes, "the death of God in the soul of a child". Mauriac persuaded him to begin writing about his harrowing experiences.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel first wrote the 900-page memoir "Un di velt hot geshvign" ("And the World Remained Silent") in Yiddish, which was published in abridged form in Buenos Aires. Wiesel rewrote a shortened version of the manuscript in French, "La Nuit", in 1955. It was translated into English as "Night" in 1960. The book sold few copies after its initial publication, but still attracted interest from reviewers, leading to television interviews with Wiesel and meetings with writers such as Saul Bellow.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: As its profile rose, "Night" was eventually translated into 30 languages with ten million copies sold in the United States. At one point film director Orson Welles wanted to make it into a feature film, but Wiesel refused, feeling that his memoir would lose its meaning if it were told without the silences in between his words. Oprah Winfrey made it a spotlight selection for her book club in 2006.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 1955, Wiesel moved to New York as foreign correspondent for the Israel daily, "Yediot Ahronot". In 1969, he married Marion Erster Rose, who was from Austria, who also translated many of his books. They had one son, Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, named after Wiesel's father.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In the U.S., he eventually wrote over 40 books, most of them non-fiction Holocaust literature, and novels. As an author, he was awarded a number of literary prizes and is considered among the most important in describing the Holocaust from a highly personal perspective. As a result, some historians credited Wiesel with giving the term "Holocaust" its present meaning, although he did not feel that the word adequately described that historical event. In 1975, he co-founded the magazine "Moment" with writer Leonard Fein.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: The 1979 book and play "The Trial of God" are said to have been based on his real-life Auschwitz experience of witnessing three Jews who, close to death, conduct a trial against God, under the accusation that He has been oppressive towards the Jewish people.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel also played a role in the initial success of "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosinski by endorsing it before it became known the book was fiction and, in the sense that it was presented as all Kosinski's true experience, a hoax.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel published two volumes of memoirs. The first, "All Rivers Run to the Sea", was published in 1994 and covered his life up to the year 1969. The second, titled "And the Sea is Never Full" and published in 1999, covered the years from 1969 to 1999.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel and his wife, Marion, started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity in 1986. He served as chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed the US Holocaust Memorial Council) from 1978 to 1986, spearheading the building of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Sigmund Strochlitz was his close friend and confidant during these years.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: The Holocaust Memorial Museum gives the Elie Wiesel Award to "internationally prominent individuals whose actions have advanced the Museum's vision of a world where people confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity". The Foundation had invested its endowment in money manager Bernard L. Madoff's investment Ponzi scheme, costing the Foundation $15 million and Wiesel and his wife much of their own personal savings.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 1982, at the request of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Wiesel agreed to resign from his position as chairman of a planned international conference on the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. Wiesel then worked with the Foreign Ministry in its attempts to get the conference either cancelled or to remove all discussion of the Armenian genocide from it, and to those ends he provided the Foreign Ministry with internal documents on the conference's planning and lobbied fellow academics to not attend the conference.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Following his death, Wiesel was criticised by some for his perceived silence on certain Israeli government policies with regards to the Palestinians. During his lifetime Weisel had deflected questions on the topic, claiming to abstain from commenting on Israel's 'internal debates'. Despite this position, Wiesel had gone on record as supporting the idea of expanding Jewish settlements into the Palestinian territories conquered by Israel during the 6 Day War, such settlements are considered illegal by the international community.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism. The Norwegian Nobel Committee described Wiesel as "one of the most important spiritual leaders and guides in an age when violence, repression, and racism continue to characterize the world". Wiesel explained his feelings during his acceptance speech:


title: Elie Wiesel

text: He received many other prizes and honors for his work, including the Congressional Gold Medal in 1985, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel co-founded "Moment" magazine with Leonard Fein in 1975. They founded the magazine to provide a voice for American Jews. He was also a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel became a regular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust. As a political activist, he advocated for many causes, including Israel, the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the victims of "apartheid" in South Africa, Argentina's "Desaparecidos", Bosnian victims of genocide in the former Yugoslavia, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, and the Kurds.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In April 1999, Wiesel delivered the speech "The Perils of Indifference" in Washington D.C., criticizing the people and countries who chose to be indifferent while the Holocaust was happening. He defined indifference as being neutral between two sides, which, in this case, amounts to overlooking the victims of the Holocaust. Throughout the speech, he expressed the view that a little bit of attention, either positive or negative, is better than no attention at all.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 2003, he discovered and publicized the fact that at least 280,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews, along with other groups, were massacred in Romanian-run death camps.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 2005, he gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the new building of Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust History Museum:


title: Elie Wiesel

text: I know what people say – it is so easy. Those that were there won't agree with that statement. The statement is: it was man's inhumanity to man. NO! It was man's inhumanity to Jews! Jews were not killed because they were human beings. In the eyes of the killers they were not human beings! They were Jews!


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In early 2006, Wiesel accompanied Oprah Winfrey as she visited Auschwitz, a visit which was broadcast as part of "The Oprah Winfrey Show". On November 30, 2006, Wiesel received a knighthood in London in recognition of his work toward raising Holocaust education in the United Kingdom.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In September 2006, he appeared before the UN Security Council with actor George Clooney to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. When Wiesel died, Clooney wrote, "We had a champion who carried our pain, our guilt, and our responsibility on his shoulders for generations."


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 2007, Wiesel was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award. That same year, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity issued a letter condemning Armenian genocide denial, a letter that was signed by 53 Nobel laureates including Wiesel. Wiesel has repeatedly called Turkey's 90-year-old campaign to downplay its actions during the Armenian genocide a double killing.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 2009, Wiesel criticized the Vatican for lifting the excommunication of controversial bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the Society of Saint Pius X. The excommunication was later reimposed.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In June 2009, Wiesel accompanied US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as they toured the Buchenwald concentration camp. Wiesel was an adviser at the Gatestone Institute. In 2010, Wiesel accepted a five-year appointment as a Distinguished Presidential Fellow at Chapman University in Orange County, California. In that role, he made a one-week visit to Chapman annually to meet with students and offer his perspective on subjects ranging from Holocaust history to religion, languages, literature, law and music.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In July 2009, Wiesel announced his support to the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka. He said that, "Wherever minorities are being persecuted, we must raise our voices to protest ... The Tamil people are being disenfranchised and victimized by the Sri Lanka authorities. This injustice must stop. The Tamil people must be allowed to live in peace and flourish in their homeland."


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 2009, Wiesel returned to Hungary for his first visit since the Holocaust. During this visit, Wiesel participated in a conference at the Upper House Chamber of the Hungarian Parliament, met Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai and President László Sólyom, and made a speech to the approximately 10,000 participants of an anti-racist gathering held in Faith Hall. However, in 2012, he protested against "the whitewashing" of Hungary's involvement in the Holocaust, and he gave up the Great Cross award he had received from the Hungarian government.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel was active in trying to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, stating that, "The words and actions of the leadership of Iran leave no doubt as to their intentions". He also condemned Hamas for the "use of children as human shields" during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict by running an ad in several large newspapers. "The Times" refused to run the advertisement, saying, "The opinion being expressed is too strong, and too forcefully made, and will cause concern amongst a significant number of "Times" readers."


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel often emphasized the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and criticized the Obama administration for pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt East Jerusalem Israeli settlement construction. He stated that "Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture—and not a single time in the Koran ... It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city".


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel held the position of Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Boston University from 1976, teaching in both its religion and philosophy departments. He became a close friend of the president and chancellor John Silber. The university created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. From 1972 to 1976 Wiesel was a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York and member of the American Federation of Teachers.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 1982 he served as the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University. He also co-instructed Winter Term (January) courses at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida. From 1997 to 1999 he was Ingeborg Rennert Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies at Barnard College of Columbia University.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In 1969 he married Marion Erster Rose, who originally was from Austria and also translated many of his books. They had one son, Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, named after Wiesel's father. The family lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel was attacked in a San Francisco hotel by 22-year-old Holocaust denier Eric Hunt in February 2007, but was not injured. Hunt was arrested the following month and charged with multiple offenses.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: In February 2012, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints performed a posthumous baptism for Simon Wiesenthal's parents without proper authorization. After his own name was submitted for proxy baptism, Wiesel spoke out against the unauthorized practice of posthumously baptizing Jews and asked presidential candidate and Latter-day Saint Mitt Romney to denounce it. Romney's campaign declined to comment, directing such questions to church officials.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Wiesel died on the morning of July 2, 2016, at his home in Manhattan, aged 87. After a private funeral service was conducted in honor of him at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, he was buried at the Sharon Gardens Cemetery in Valhalla, New York on July 3.


title: Elie Wiesel

text: Utah senator Orrin Hatch paid tribute to Wiesel in a speech on the Senate floor the following week, in which he said that "With Elie's passing, we have lost a beacon of humanity and hope. We have lost a hero of human rights and a luminary of Holocaust literature."


title: Reality television

text: Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s with shows such as "The Real World", then achieved prominence in the early 2000s with the success of the series "Survivor", "Idols", and "Big Brother", all of which became global franchises. Reality television shows tend to be interspersed with "confessionals", short interview segments in which cast members reflect on or provide context for the events being depicted on-screen; this is most commonly seen in American reality television. Competition-based reality shows typically feature gradual elimination of participants, either by a panel of judges, by the viewership of the show, or by the contestants themselves.


title: Reality television

text: Documentaries, television news, sports television, talk shows, and traditional game shows are generally not classified as reality television. Some genres of television programming that predate the reality television boom have been retroactively classified as reality television, including hidden camera shows, talent-search shows, documentary series about ordinary people, high-concept game shows, home improvement shows, and court shows featuring real-life cases and issues.


title: Reality television

text: Reality television has faced significant criticism since its rise in popularity. Critics argue that reality television shows do not accurately reflect reality, in ways both implicit (participants being placed in artificial situations), and deceptive (misleading editing, participants being coached on behavior, storylines generated ahead of time, scenes being staged). Some shows have been accused of rigging the favorite or underdog to win. Other criticisms of reality television shows include that they are intended to humiliate or exploit participants; that they make stars out of untalented people unworthy of fame, infamous figures, or both; and that they glamorize vulgarity.


title: Reality television

text: Television formats portraying ordinary people in unscripted situations are almost as old as the television medium itself. Producer-host Allen Funt's "Candid Camera", in which unsuspecting people were confronted with funny, unusual situations and filmed with hidden cameras, first aired in 1948. In the 21st century, the series is often considered a prototype of reality television programming.


title: Reality television

text: Precedents for television that portrayed people in unscripted situations began in the late 1940s. "Queen for a Day" (1945–1964) was an early example of reality-based television. The 1946 television game show "Cash and Carry" sometimes featured contestants performing stunts. Debuting in 1948, Allen Funt's hidden camera show "Candid Camera" (based on his previous 1947 radio show, "Candid Microphone") broadcast unsuspecting ordinary people reacting to pranks. In 1948, talent search shows, such as "Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour" and "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts", featured amateur competitors and audience voting. In the 1950s, game shows "Beat the Clock" and "Truth or Consequences" involved contestants in wacky competitions, stunts, and practical jokes. "Confession" was a crime and police show that aired from June 1958 to January 1959, with interviewer Jack Wyatt questioning criminals from assorted backgrounds. The radio series "Nightwatch" (1951–1955) tape-recorded the daily activities of Culver City, California police officers. The series "You Asked for It" (1950–1959) incorporated audience involvement by basing episodes around requests sent in by postcard from viewers.


title: Reality television

text: First broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964, the Granada Television documentary "Seven Up!" broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary 7-year-olds from a broad cross-section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life. Every seven years, the filmmaker created a new film documenting the lives of the same individuals during the intervening period. Titled the Up Series, episodes included "7 Plus Seven", "21 Up", etc.; it is still ongoing. The program was structured as a series of interviews with no element of the plot. By virtue of the attention paid to the participants, it effectively turned ordinary people into a type of celebrity, especially after they became adults.


title: Reality television

text: The series "The American Sportsman", which ran from 1965 to 1986 on ABC in the United States, would typically feature one or more celebrities, and sometimes their family members, being accompanied by a camera crew on an outdoor adventure, such as hunting, fishing, hiking, scuba diving, rock climbing, wildlife photography, horseback riding, race car driving, and the like, with most of the resulting action and dialogue being unscripted, except for the narration.


title: Reality television

text: In the 1966 Direct Cinema film "Chelsea Girls", Andy Warhol filmed various acquaintances with no direction given. The "Radio Times Guide to Film 2007" said that the film was "to blame for reality television".


title: Reality television

text: The 12-part 1973 PBS series "An American Family" showed a nuclear family (filmed in 1971) going through a divorce; unlike many later reality shows, it was more or less documentary in purpose and style. In 1974 a counterpart program, "The Family", was made in the UK, following the working-class Wilkins family of Reading. Other forerunners of modern reality television were the 1970s productions of Chuck Barris: "The Dating Game", "The Newlywed Game", and "The Gong Show", all of which featured participants who were eager to sacrifice some of their privacy and dignity in a televised competition.


title: Reality television

text: The 1976-1980 BBC series "The Big Time" featured a different amateur in some field (cooking, comedy, football, etc.) trying to succeed professionally in that field, with help from notable experts. The 15-episode series is credited with starting the career of Sheena Easton, who was selected to appear in the episode showing an aspiring pop singer trying to enter the music business.


title: Reality television

text: In 1978, "Living in the Past" had amateurs participating in a re-enactment of life in an Iron Age English village.


title: Reality television

text: Producer George Schlatter capitalized on the advent of videotape to create "Real People", a surprise hit for NBC, and it ran from 1979 to 1984. The success of "Real People" was quickly copied by ABC with "That's Incredible", a stunt show produced by Alan Landsburg and co-hosted by Fran Tarkenton; CBS's entry into the genre was "That's My Line", a series hosted by Bob Barker. The Canadian series "Thrill of a Lifetime", a fantasies-fulfilled reality show, originally ran from 1982 to 1988. It was revived from 2001 to 2003. In 1985, underwater cinematographer Al Giddings teamed with former Miss Universe Shawn Weatherly on the NBC series "Oceanquest", which chronicled Weatherly's adventures scuba diving in various exotic locales. Weatherly was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in informational programming.


title: Reality television

text: "COPS", which first aired in the spring of 1989 on Fox and was developed due to the need for new programming during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, showed police officers on duty apprehending criminals. It introduced the camcorder look and cinéma vérité feel of much of later reality television. The 1991 television documentary on "typical American high schoolers", "Yearbook", focused on seniors attending Glenbard West High School, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois and broadcast prime-time on Fox.


title: Reality television

text: The series "Nummer 28", which aired on Dutch television in 1991, originated the concept of putting strangers together in a limited environment for an extended period of time and recording the drama that ensued. "Nummer 28" also pioneered many of the stylistic conventions that have since become standard in reality television shows, including extensive use of soundtrack music and the interspersing of events on screen with after-the-fact "confessionals" recorded by cast members, which serve as narration. One year later, the same concept was used by MTV in its new series "The Real World". "Nummer 28" creator Erik Latour has long claimed that "The Real World" was directly inspired by his show. But the producers of "The Real World" have said that their direct inspiration was "An American Family". According to television commentator Charlie Brooker, this type of reality television was enabled by the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems for video (such as produced by Avid Technology) in 1989. These systems made it easy to quickly edit hours of video footage into a usable form, something that had been very difficult to do before (film, which was easy to edit, was too expensive to use in shooting enough hours on a regular basis).


title: Reality television

text: "Sylvania Waters" (1992) was an Australian show that depicted a family, similar in concept to "An American Family".


title: Reality television

text: The 1994–95 O. J. Simpson murder case, during which live network television followed suspect Simpson for 90 minutes being chased by police, has been described as a seminal moment in reality television. Networks interrupted their regular television programming for months for coverage of the trial and related events. Because of Simpson's status as a top athlete and celebrity, the brutal nature of the murders, and issues of race and class in Los Angeles celebrity culture, the sensational case dominated ratings and the public conversation.


title: Reality television

text: Many reality television stars of the 2000s and 2010s have direct or indirect connections to people involved in the case, most notably Kim Kardashian, daughter of defense attorney Robert Kardashian, and several of her relatives and associates.


title: Reality television

text: The series "Expedition Robinson", created by television producer Charlie Parsons, which first aired in 1997 in Sweden (and was later produced in a large number of other countries as "Survivor"), added to the "Nummer 28"/"Real World" template the idea of competition and elimination. Cast members or contestants battled against each other and were removed from the show until only one winner remained (these shows are now sometimes called elimination shows). "Changing Rooms", a program that began in 1996, showed couples redecorating each other's houses, and was the first reality show with a self-improvement or makeover theme. The dating reality show "Streetmate" premiered in the UK in 1998. Originally created by Gabe Sachs as "Street Match", it was a flop in the United States. But the show was revamped in the UK by Tiger Aspect Productions and became a cult hit. The production team from the original series later created the popular reality shows "Strictly Come Dancing", "Location, Location, Location", and the revamped "MasterChef", among others. The 1980s and 1990s were also a time when tabloid talk shows became more popular. Many of these featured the same types of unusual or dysfunctional guests who would later become popular as cast members of reality shows.


title: Reality television

text: Reality television became globally popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the successes of the "Big Brother" and "Survivor/Expedition Robinson" franchises. In the United States, reality television programs suffered a temporary decline in viewership in 2001, leading some entertainment industry columnists to speculate that the genre was a temporary fad that had run its course. Reality shows that suffered from low ratings included "The Amazing Race" (although the show has since recovered and is in its 32nd edition), "Lost" (unrelated to the better-known serial drama of the same name) and "The Mole" (which was successful in other countries). But stronghold shows "Survivor" and "American Idol" continued to thrive: both topped the U.S. season-average television ratings in the 2000s. "Survivor" led the ratings in 2001–02, and "Idol" has the longest hold on the No. 1 rank in the American television ratings, dominating over all other primetime programs and other television series in the overall viewership tallies for eight consecutive years, from the 2003–2004 to the 2010–2011 television seasons.


title: Reality television

text: Internationally, a number of shows created in the late 1990s and 2000s have had massive global success. Reality-television franchises created during that time that have had more than 30 international adaptations each include the singing competition franchises "Idols", "Star Academy" and "The X Factor", other competition franchises "Survivor/Expedition Robinson", "Big Brother", "The Biggest Loser", "Come Dine with Me", "Got Talent", "Top Model", "MasterChef", "Project Runway" and "Dancing with the Stars", and the investment franchise "Dragons' Den". Several "reality game shows" from the same period have had even greater success, including "Deal or No Deal", "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", and "Weakest Link", with over 50 international adaptions each. (All but four of these franchises, "Top Model", "Project Runway", "The Biggest Loser" and "Dragons' Den", were created by either British producers or the Dutch production company Endemol. Although "Dragons' Den" originated in Japan, most of its adaptations are based on the British version.) In India, the competition show "Indian Idol" was the most popular television program for its first six seasons.


title: Reality television

text: During the 2000s, several cable networks, including Bravo, A&E, E!, TLC, History, VH1, and MTV, changed their programming to feature mostly reality television series. In addition, three cable channels were started around that time that were devoted exclusively to reality television: Fox Reality in the United States, which operated from 2005 to 2010; Global Reality Channel in Canada, which lasted two years from 2010 to 2012; and CBS Reality (formerly known as Reality TV and then Zone Reality) in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which has run from 1999 to the present.


title: Reality television

text: During the early part of the 2000s, network executives expressed concern that reality-television programming was limited in its appeal for DVD reissue and syndication. But DVDs for reality shows sold briskly; "", "The Amazing Race", "Project Runway", and "America's Next Top Model" all ranked in the top DVDs sold on Amazon.com. In the mid-2000s, DVDs of "The Simple Life" outranked scripted shows such as "The O.C." and "Desperate Housewives". Syndication, however, has been problematic; shows such as "Fear Factor", "COPS", and "Wife Swap", in which each episode is self-contained, can be rerun fairly easily, but usually only on cable television or during the daytime ("COPS" and "America's Funniest Home Videos" being exceptions). Season-long competitions, such as "The Amazing Race", "Survivor", and "America's Next Top Model" generally perform more poorly and usually must be rerun in marathons to draw the necessary viewers to make it worthwhile. (Even in these cases, it is not always successful: the first ten seasons of "Dancing with the Stars" were picked up by GSN in 2012 and was run in marathon format, but attracted low viewership and had very poor ratings). Another option is to create documentaries around series, including extended interviews with the participants and outtakes not seen in the original airings; the syndicated series "American Idol Rewind" is an example of this strategy.


title: Reality television

text: "COPS" has had huge success in syndication, direct response sales, and DVD. A Fox staple since 1989, "COPS" has, as of 2013 (when it moved to cable channel Spike), outlasted all competing scripted police shows. Another series that had wide success is "Cheaters", which has been running since 2000 in the U.S. and is syndicated in over 100 countries worldwide. In 2001, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences added the reality genre to the Emmy Awards in the category of Outstanding Reality Program. In 2003, to better differentiate between competition and informational reality programs, a second category, Outstanding Reality-Competition Program, was added. In 2008, a third category, Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program, was added. In 2007, the web series "The Next Internet Millionaire" appeared; it was a competition show based in part on "The Apprentice", and was billed as the world's first Internet reality show.


title: Reality television

text: "The Voice", a singing competition franchise created by John de Mol that started in 2010, remains the newest highly successful reality television franchise, with almost 50 international adaptations. "The Tester" (2010-2012) was the first reality television show aired over a video game console.


title: Reality television

text: By 2012, many of the long-running reality television show franchises in the United States, such as "American Idol", "Dancing with the Stars" and "The Bachelor", had begun to see declining ratings. However, reality television as a whole remained durable in the U.S., with hundreds of shows across many channels. In 2012, "New York" Magazine's "Vulture" blog published a humorous Venn diagram showing popular themes across American reality shows then running, including shows set in the U.S. states of Alaska, Louisiana and Texas, shows about cakes, weddings and pawnbrokers, and shows, usually competition-based, whose title includes the word "Wars".


title: Reality television

text: "Duck Dynasty" (2012-2017), which focused on the Robertson family that founded Duck Commander, in 2013 became the most popular reality series in U.S. cable television history. Its fourth-season premiere was viewed by nearly 12 million viewers in the United States, most of which were in rural markets. Its rural audience share ranked in the 30s, an extremely high number for any series, broadcast or cable.


title: Reality television

text: In 2014, "Entertainment Weekly" and "Variety" again noted a stagnation in reality television programs' ratings in the U.S., which they attributed to "The diminishing returns of cable TV's sea of reality sameness". They noted that a number of networks that featured reality programming, including Bravo and E!, were launching their first scripted shows, and others, including AMC, were abandoning plans to launch further reality programs; though they clarified that the genre as a whole "isn't going anywhere." Ratings and profits from reality TV continued to decline in the late 2010s.


title: Reality television

text: The South Korean music competition "King of Mask Singer" emerged in 2015, which features celebrities performing under pseudonyms and concealed by a mask. Each contestant competed against the titular returning champion (the "mask king"), with the loser being eliminated and forced to reveal their identity. The format was first exported to other Asian countries, such as Thailand; in 2017, television producer Craig Plestis acquired the U.S. rights to the format and sold a retooled American version—"The Masked Singer"—to Fox, which premiered in January 2019. "The Masked Singer" became one of Fox's biggest premieres since 2019, and was the highest-rated non-NFL program and third highest-rated series overall of the 2018–19 (tied with sitcom "The Big Bang Theory") and 2019–20 television seasons.<ref name="S2/3AvgRatings"></ref> In an attempt to ride off the popularity of "The Masked Singer", Fox subsequently pursued other reality competitions and game shows based around mysteries, such as "Game of Talents", and another South Korean format in "I Can See Your Voice."


title: Reality television

text: Television development across all genres was impacted in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many reality competition series to suspend production (and in some cases curtail a competition already in progress, such as Canadian and Malayalam versions of "Big Brother"), until such time that production could recommence with appropriate health and safety protocols approved by local authorities. Due to their quicker turnaround times, the U.S. networks used reality series and other unscripted content (including those delayed from their summer lineups) to fill gaps in their schedules while the production of scripted programming resumed.


title: Reality television

text: Another categorization divides reality television into two types: shows that purport to document real life, and shows that place participants in new circumstances. In a 2003 paper, theorists Elisabeth Klaus and Stephanie Lücke referred to the former category as "docusoaps", which consist of "narrative reality", and the latter category as "reality soaps", which consist of "performative reality". Since 2014, the Primetime Emmy Awards have used a similar classification, with separate awards for "unstructured reality" and "structured reality" programs, as well as a third award for "reality-competition" programs.


title: Reality television

text: In many reality television programs, camera shooting and footage editing give the viewer the impression that they are passive observers following people going about their daily personal and professional activities; this style of filming is sometimes referred to as fly on the wall, observational documentary or factual television. Story "plots" are often constructed via editing or planned situations, with the results resembling soap operas – hence the terms "docusoap" and "docudrama". Documentary-style programs give viewers a private look into the lives of the subjects.


title: Reality television

text: Although the term "docusoap" has been used for many documentary-style reality television shows, there have been shows that have deliberately tried to mimic the appearance and structure of soap operas. Such shows often focus on a close-knit group of people and their shifting friendships and romantic relationships. One highly influential such series was the American 2004–2006 series "," which attempted to specifically mimic the primetime soap opera "The O.C.", which had begun airing in 2003. "Laguna Beach" had a more cinematic feel than any previous reality television show, through the use of higher-quality lighting and cameras, voice-over narration instead of on-screen "confessionals", and slower pacing. "Laguna Beach" led to several spinoff series, most notably the 2006–2010 series "The Hills". It also inspired various other series, including the highly successful British series "The Only Way Is Essex" and "Made in Chelsea", and the Australian series "Freshwater Blue".


title: Reality television

text: Due to their cinematic feel, many of these shows have been accused of being pre-scripted, more so than other reality television shows have. The producers of "The Only Way Is Essex" and "Made in Chelsea" have admitted to coaching cast members on what to say in order to draw more emotion from each scene, although they insist that the underlying stories are real.


title: Reality television

text: Another highly successful group of soap-opera-style shows is the "Real Housewives" franchise, which began with "The Real Housewives of Orange County" in 2006 and has since spawned nearly twenty other series, in the U.S. and internationally. The franchise has an older cast and different personal dynamics than that of "Laguna Beach" and its imitators, as well as lower production values, but similarly is meant to resemble scripted soap operas – in this case, the television series "Desperate Housewives" and "Peyton Place".


title: Reality television

text: A notable subset of such series focus on a group of women who are romantically connected to male celebrities; these include "Basketball Wives" (2010), "Love & Hip Hop" (2011), "Hollywood Exes" (2012), "Ex-Wives of Rock" (2012) and "WAGS" (2015). Most of these shows have had spin-offs in multiple locations.


title: Reality television

text: There are also fly-on-the-wall-style shows directly involving celebrities. Often these show a celebrity going about their everyday life: notable examples include "The Anna Nicole Show", "The Osbournes", "Gene Simmons Family Jewels", "", "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and "Hogan Knows Best". VH1 in the mid-2000s had an entire block of such shows, known as "Celebreality". Shows such as these are often created with the idea of promoting a celebrity product or upcoming project.


title: Reality television

text: Some documentary-style shows shed light on rarely seen cultures and lifestyles. One example is shows about people with disabilities or people who have unusual physical circumstances, such as the American series "Push Girls" and "Little People, Big World", and the British programmes "Beyond Boundaries", "Britain's Missing Top Model", "The Undateables" and "Seven Dwarves".


title: Reality television

text: Another example is shows that portray the lives of ethnic or religious minorities. Examples include "All-American Muslim" (Lebanese-American Muslims), "Shahs of Sunset" (affluent Persian-Americans), "Sister Wives" (polygamists from a Mormon splinter group), "Breaking Amish" and "Amish Mafia" (the Amish), and "Big Fat Gypsy Weddings" and its spinoffs (Romani people).


title: Reality television

text: The "Real Housewives" franchise offers a window into the lives of social-striving urban and suburban housewives. Many shows focus on wealth and conspicuous consumption, including "Platinum Weddings", and "My Super Sweet 16", which documented huge coming of age celebrations thrown by wealthy parents. Conversely, the highly successful "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" and "Duck Dynasty" are set in poorer rural areas of the Southern United States.


title: Reality television

text: Some documentary-style shows portray professionals either going about day-to-day business or performing an entire project over the course of a series. One early example (and the longest running reality show of any genre) is "Cops", which debuted in 1989. Other such shows specifically relating to law enforcement include "The First 48", "Dog the Bounty Hunter", "Police Stop!", "Traffic Cops", "" and "Motorway Patrol".


title: Reality television

text: Shows set at a specific place of business include "American Chopper", "Miami Ink" and its spinoffs, "Bikini Barbershop" and "Lizard Lick Towing".


title: Reality television

text: Shows that show people working in the same non-business location include "Airport" and "Bondi Rescue".


title: Reality television

text: Shows that portray a set of people in the same line of work, occasionally competing with each other, include "Deadliest Catch", "Ice Road Truckers" and "Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles" and its spinoffs.


title: Reality television

text: One notable subset of shows about professional activities is those in which the professionals haggle and engage in financial transactions, often over unique or rare items whose value must first be appraised. Two such shows, both of which have led to multiple spinoff shows, are "Pawn Stars" (about pawn shops) and "American Pickers". Other shows, while based around such financial transactions, also show elements of its main cast members' personal and professional lives; these shows include "Hardcore Pawn" and "Comic Book Men". Such shows have some antecedent in the British series "Antiques Roadshow", which began airing in 1979 and has since spawned numerous international versions, although that show includes only appraisals and does not include bargaining or other dramatic elements.


title: Reality television

text: While for "documentary-style" shows it is implied that the events shown would still be taking place even if the cameras were not there, in other shows the events taking place are done overtly for the sake of the show. These shows differ from "reality competition" shows or "reality game shows" (see below) in that participants do not compete against one another.


title: Reality television

text: Some documentary-style programs place cast members, who in most cases previously did not know each other, in staged living environments; "The Real World" was the originator of this format. In almost every other such type of programming, cast members are given specific challenges or obstacles to overcome. "Road Rules", which first aired in 1995 as a spin-off of "The Real World", created a show structure where the cast would travel to various countries performing challenges for prizes.


title: Reality television

text: "Big Brother" is probably the best-known program of this type in the world, with around 50 international versions having been produced. Other shows in this category, such as "The 1900 House" and "Lads' Army", involve historical re-enactment, with cast members living and working as people of a specific time and place. 2001's "Temptation Island" achieved some notoriety by placing several couples on an island surrounded by single people in order to test the couples' commitment to each other. "The Challenge" has contestants living together in an overseas residence, and has been around for over 30 seasons. The format of each season changes, however the main premise of the series involves a daily challenge, nomination process and elimination round. "" combined the "special living environment" format with the "professional activity" format noted earlier; in addition to living together in a loft, each member of the show's cast was hired to host a television program for a Canadian cable channel.


title: Reality television

text: "The Simple Life", "Tommy Lee Goes to College" and "The Surreal Life" are all shows in which celebrities are put into an unnatural environment.


title: Reality television

text: Originally, court shows were all dramatized and staged programs, with actors playing the litigants, witnesses and lawyers. The cases were either reenactments of real-life cases or cases that were fictionalized altogether. Among examples of staged courtroom dramas are "Famous Jury Trials", "Your Witness", and the first two eras of "Divorce Court". "The People's Court" revolutionized the genre by introducing the arbitration-based "reality" format in 1981, later adopted by the vast majority of court shows. The genre experienced a lull in programming after "The People's Court" was canceled in 1993, but then soared after the emergence of "Judge Judy" in 1996. This led to a slew of other reality court shows, such as "Judge Mathis", "Judge Joe Brown", "Judge Alex", "Judge Mills Lane" and "Judge Hatchett".


title: Reality television

text: Though the litigants are legitimate, the "judges" in such shows are actually arbitrators, as these pseudo-judges are not actually presiding in a court of law. Typically, however, they are retired judges or at least individuals who have had some legal experience.


title: Reality television

text: The globally syndicated format "Dragons' Den" shows a group of wealthy investors choosing whether or not to invest in a series of pitched startup companies and entrepreneurial ventures. The series "Restaurant Startup" similarly involves investors, but involves more of a game show element in which restaurant owners compete to prove their worth. The British series "Show Me the Monet" offers a twist in which artworks' artistic value, rather than their financial value, is appraised by a panel of judges, who determine whether each one will be featured at an exhibition.


title: Reality television

text: Another subgenre places people in wild and challenging natural settings. This includes such shows as "Survivorman", "Man vs. Wild", "Marooned with Ed Stafford", "Naked and Afraid" and "Alaskan Bush People". The shows "Survivor" and "Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls" combine outdoor survival with a competition format, although in "Survivor" the competition also involves social dynamics.


title: Reality television

text: Some reality television shows cover a person or group of people improving their lives. Sometimes the same group of people are covered over an entire season (as in "The Swan" and "Celebrity Fit Club"), but usually there is a new target for improvement in each episode. Despite differences in the content, the format is usually the same: first the show introduces the subjects in their current, less-than-ideal environment. Then the subjects meet with a group of experts, who give the subjects instructions on how to improve things; they offer aid and encouragement along the way. Finally, the subjects are placed back in their environment and they, along with their friends and family and the experts, appraise the changes that have occurred. Other self-improvement or makeover shows include "The Biggest Loser", "Extreme Weight Loss" and "Fat March" (which cover weight loss), "Extreme Makeover" (entire physical appearance), "Queer Eye", "What Not to Wear", "How Do I Look?", "Trinny & Susannah Undress..." and "Snog Marry Avoid?" (style and grooming), "Supernanny" (child-rearing), "Made" (life transformation), "Tool Academy" (relationship building) and "Charm School" and "From G's to Gents" (self-improvement and manners).


title: Reality television

text: The concept of self-improvement was taken to its extreme with the British show "Life Laundry", in which people who had become hoarders, even living in squalor, were given professional assistance. The American television series "Hoarders" and "" follow similar premises, presenting interventions in the lives of people who suffer from compulsive hoarding.


title: Reality television

text: In one study, participants who admitted to watching more reality television were more likely to proceed with a desired plastic surgery than those who watched less.


title: Reality television

text: Some shows makeover part or all of a person's living space, workspace, or vehicle. The American series "This Old House", which debuted in 1979, features the start-to-finish renovation of different houses through a season; media critic Jeff Jarvis has speculated that it is "the original reality TV show." The British show "Changing Rooms", beginning in 1996 (later remade in the U.S. as "Trading Spaces") was the first such renovation show that added a game show feel with different weekly contestants.


title: Reality television

text: House renovation shows are a mainstay on the American and Canadian cable channel HGTV, whose renovation shows include the successful franchises "Flip or Flop", "Love It or List It" and "Property Brothers", as well as shows such as "Debbie Travis' Facelift", "Designed to Sell" and "Holmes on Homes". Non-HGTV shows in this category include "" and "While You Were Out".


title: Reality television

text: In some shows, one or more experts try to improve a failing small business over the course of each episode. Examples that cover many types of business include "We Mean Business" and "The Profit". Shows geared for a specific type of business include "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" and "" (for restaurants), "Bar Rescue" (for bars) and "Hotel Hell" (for hotels).


title: Reality television

text: Another type of reality program is the social experiment that produces drama, conflict, and sometimes transformation. British TV series "Wife Swap", which began in 2003, and has had many spinoffs in the UK and other countries, is a notable example. In the show, people with different values agree to live by each other's social rules for a brief period of time. Other shows in this category include "Trading Spouses", "Bad Girls Club" and "Holiday Showdown". "Faking It" was a series where people had to learn a new skill and pass themselves off as experts in that skill. "Shattered" was a controversial 2004 UK series in which contestants competed for how long they could go without sleep. "Solitary" was a controversial 2006-2010 Fox Reality series that isolated contestants for weeks in solitary confinement pods with limited sleep, food and information while competing in elimination challenges ended by a quit button, causing winners to go on for much longer than needed as a blind gamble to not be the first person to quit.


title: Reality television

text: Another type of reality programming features hidden cameras rolling when random passers-by encounter a staged situation. "Candid Camera", which first aired on television in 1948, pioneered the format. Modern variants of this type of production include "Punk'd", "Trigger Happy TV", "Primetime: What Would You Do?", "The Jamie Kennedy Experiment" and "". The series "Scare Tactics" and "Room 401" are hidden-camera programs in which the goal is to frighten contestants rather than just befuddle or amuse them. Not all hidden camera shows use strictly staged situations. For example, the syndicated program "Cheaters" purports to use hidden cameras to record suspected cheating partners, although the authenticity of the show has been questioned, and even refuted by some who have been featured on the series. Once the evidence has been gathered, the accuser confronts the cheating partner with the assistance of the host. In many special-living documentary programs, hidden cameras are set up all over the residence in order to capture moments missed by the regular camera crew, or intimate bedroom footage.


title: Reality television

text: Supernatural and paranormal reality shows such as "MTV's Fear", place participants into frightening situations which ostensibly involve paranormal phenomena such as ghosts, telekinesis or haunted houses. In series such as "Celebrity Paranormal Project", the stated aim is investigation, and some series like "Scariest Places on Earth" challenge participants to survive the investigation; whereas others such as "Paranormal State" and "Ghost Hunters" use a recurring crew of paranormal researchers. In general, the shows follow similar stylized patterns of night vision, surveillance, and hand held camera footage; odd angles; subtitles establishing place and time; desaturated imagery; and non-melodic soundtracks. Noting the trend in reality shows that take the paranormal at face value, "New York Times" culture editor Mike Hale characterized ghost hunting shows as "pure theater" and compared the genre to professional wrestling or softcore pornography for its formulaic, teasing approach.


title: Reality television

text: Another subgenre of reality television is "reality competition", "reality playoffs", or so-called "reality game shows," which follow the format of non-tournament elimination contests. Typically, participants are filmed competing to win a prize, often while living together in a confined environment. In many cases, participants are removed until only one person or team remains, who is then declared the winner. Usually this is done by eliminating participants one at a time (or sometimes two at a time, as an episodic twist due to the number of contestants involved and the length of a given season), through either disapproval voting or by voting for the most popular to win. Voting is done by the viewing audience, the show's own participants, a panel of judges, or some combination of the three.


title: Reality television

text: A well-known example of a reality-competition show is the globally syndicated "Big Brother", in which cast members live together in the same house, with participants removed at regular intervals by either the viewing audience or, in the American version, by the participants themselves. There remains disagreement over whether talent-search shows such as the "Idol" series, the "Got Talent" series and the "Dancing with the Stars" series are truly reality television or just newer incarnations of shows such as "Star Search". Although the shows involve a traditional talent search, the shows follow the reality-competition conventions of removing one or more contestants in every episode, allowing the public to vote on who is removed, and interspersing performances with video clips showing the contestants' "back stories", their thoughts about the competition, their rehearsals and unguarded behind-the-scenes moments. Additionally, there is a good deal of unscripted interaction shown between contestants and judges. The American Primetime Emmy Awards have nominated both "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" for the Outstanding Reality-Competition Program Emmy.


title: Reality television

text: Game shows like "Weakest Link", "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", "American Gladiators" and "Deal or No Deal", which were popular in the 2000s, also lie in a gray area: like traditional game shows (e.g., "The Price Is Right", "Jeopardy!"), the action takes place in an enclosed television studio over a short period of time; however, they have higher production values, more dramatic background music, and higher stakes than traditional shows (done either through putting contestants into physical danger or offering large cash prizes). In addition, there is more interaction between contestants and hosts, and in some cases, they feature reality-style contestant competition or elimination as well. These factors, as well as these shows' rise in global popularity at the same time as the arrival of the reality craze, have led to such shows often being grouped under both the reality television and game show umbrellas. There have been various hybrid reality-competition shows, like the worldwide-syndicated "Star Academy", which combines the "Big Brother" and "Idol" formats, "The Biggest Loser", which combines competition with the self-improvement format, and "American Inventor", which uses the "Idol" format for products instead of people. Some reality shows that aired mostly during the early 2000s, such as "Popstars", "Making the Band" and "Project Greenlight", devoted the first part of the season to selecting a winner, and the second part to showing that person or group of people working on a project.


title: Reality television

text: Dating-based competition shows follow a contestant choosing one out of a group of suitors. Over the course of either a single episode or an entire season, suitors are eliminated until only the contestant and the final suitor remains. In the early 2000s, this type of reality show dominated the other genres on the major U.S. networks. Examples include "The Bachelor", its spin-off "The Bachelorette", "Temptation Island", "Average Joe", "Flavor of Love" (a dating show featuring rapper Flavor Flav that led directly and indirectly to over 10 spinoffs), "The Cougar" and "Love in the Wild". In "Married by America", contestants were chosen by viewer voting. This is one of the older variants of the format; shows such as "The Dating Game" that date to the 1960s had similar premises (though each episode was self-contained, and not the serial format of more modern shows).


title: Reality television

text: In this category, the competition revolves around a skill that contestants were pre-screened for. Competitors perform a variety of tasks based on that skill, are judged, and are then kept or removed by a single expert or a panel of experts. The show is usually presented as a job search of some kind, in which the prize for the winner includes a contract to perform that kind of work and an undisclosed salary, although the award can simply be a sum of money and ancillary prizes, like a cover article in a magazine. The show also features judges who act as counselors, mediators and sometimes mentors to help contestants develop their skills further or perhaps decide their future position in the competition. "Popstars", which debuted in 1999, may have been the first such show, while the "Idol" series has been the longest-running and, for most of its run, the most popular such franchise. The first job-search show which showed dramatic, unscripted situations may have been "America's Next Top Model", which premiered in May 2003. Other examples include "The Apprentice" (which judges business skills); "Hell's Kitchen", "MasterChef" and "Top Chef" (for chefs), "The Great British Bake Off" (for bakers), "Shear Genius" (for hair styling), "Project Runway" (for clothing design), "Top Design" and "The Great Interior Design Challenge" (for interior design), "American Dream Builders" (for home builders), "Stylista" (for fashion editors), "Last Comic Standing" (for comedians), "I Know My Kid's a Star" (for child performers), "On the Lot" (for filmmakers), "RuPaul's Drag Race" (for drag queens), "The Shot" (for fashion photographers), "So You Think You Can Dance" (for dancers), "MuchMusic VJ Search" and "Food Network Star" (for television hosts), "Dream Job" (for sportscasters), "American Candidate" (for aspiring politicians), "" (for artists), "Face Off" (for prosthetic makeup artists), "Ink Master" and "Best Ink" (for tattoo artists), "Platinum Hit" (for songwriters), "Top Shot" (for marksmen) and "The Tester" (for game testers).


title: Reality television

text: One notable subset, popular from approximately 2005 to 2012, consisted of shows in which the winner gets a specific part in a known film, television show, musical or performing group. Examples include "Scream Queens" (where the prize was a role in the "Saw" film series), "The Glee Project" (for a role on the television show "Glee") and "How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?" (the lead role in a revival of the musical "The Sound of Music"). The most extreme prize for such a show may have been for one of the first such shows, 2005's "", where the winner became the lead singer of the rock band INXS. J.D. Fortune, who won the show, went on to be INXS's lead singer until 2011.


title: Reality television

text: Some shows use the same format with celebrities: in this case, there is no expectation that the winner will continue this line of work, and prize winnings often go to charity. The most popular such shows have been the "Dancing with the Stars" and "Dancing on Ice" franchises. Other examples of celebrity competition programs include "Deadline", "Celebracadabra" and "Celebrity Apprentice".


title: Reality television

text: Some job-related competition shows have a different set of contestants competing on every episode, and thus more closely resemble game shows, although the "confessional" commentary provided by contestants gives them a reality TV aspect. The 1993-1999 Japanese cooking competition "Iron Chef" could be considered an early example, although it does not include commentary by the participants, only by announcers and judges. Cooking competition shows with different contestants per episode that are considered reality shows include the "Chopped", "Come Dine with Me" and "Nailed It!" franchises, along with "Cupcake Wars", "Cutthroat Kitchen", "The Great Food Truck Race" and "Guy's Grocery Games".


title: Reality television

text: One concept pioneered by, and unique to, reality competition shows is the idea of immunity, in which a contestant can win the right to be exempt the next time contestants are eliminated from the show. Possibly the first instance of immunity in reality TV was on "Survivor", which premiered in 1997 in Sweden as "Expedition Robinson", before gaining international prominence after the American edition (titled "Survivor") premiered in 2000. On that show, there are complex rules around immunity: a player can achieve it by winning challenges (either as a team in the tribal phase or individually in the merged phase), or, in more recent seasons, through finding a hidden totem. They can also pass on their immunity to someone else and in the latter case, they can keep their immunity secret from other players.


title: Reality television

text: On most shows, immunity is quite a bit simpler: it is usually achieved by winning a task, often a relatively minor task during the first half of the episode; the announcement of immunity is made publicly and immunity is usually non-transferable. At some point in the season, immunity ceases to be available, and all contestants are susceptible to elimination. Competition shows that have featured immunity include the "Apprentice", "Big Brother", "Biggest Loser", "Top Model", "Project Runway", "Lego Masters", and "Top Chef" franchises. Immunity may come with additional power as well, such as in "Big Brother" where the winning contestant usually has influence over deciding who faces an elimination vote later in the week. In one "Apprentice" episode, a participant chose to waive his earned immunity and was immediately "fired" by Donald Trump for giving up this powerful asset.


title: Reality television

text: Sport-related reality shows can fall within the aforementioned sub-genres, either using it as the basis of competition, or by following sport as a profession:


title: Reality television

text: Some reality shows aim to satirize and deconstruct the conventions and cliches of the genre for comedic effect; in such cases, a fictitious premise is usually presented to one or more of the participants, with the rest of the cast consisting of actors and other figures that are in on the joke.


title: Reality television

text: The authenticity of reality television is often called into question by its detractors. The genre's title of "reality" is often criticized as being inaccurate because of claims that the genre frequently includes elements such as premeditated scripting (including a practice called "soft-scripting"), acting, urgings from behind-the-scenes crew to create specified situations of adversity and drama, and misleading editing. It has often been described as "scripting without paper".


title: Reality television

text: In many cases, the entire premise of the show is contrived, based around a competition or another unusual situation. Some shows have been accused of using fakery in order to create more compelling television, such as having premeditated storylines and in some cases feeding participants lines of dialogue, focusing only on participants' most outlandish behavior, and altering events through editing and re-shoots.


title: Reality television

text: Shows such as "Survivor" and "Amazing Race" that offer a monetary prize are regulated by federal "game show" law, , and are monitored during the filming by the legal staff and standards and practice staff of the parent network. These shows cannot be manipulated in any way that affects the outcome of the game. However, misleading editing does not fall into altering the fairness of the competition.


title: Reality television

text: Television shows that have been accused of, or admitted to, deception include "The Real World", the American version of "Survivor", "Joe Millionaire", "The Hills", "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila", "Hogan Knows Best", "", "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette", "Pawn Stars", "Storage Wars", and "Keeping Up with the Kardashians".


title: Reality television

text: Reality television's global success has become, in the view of some analysts, an important political phenomenon. In some authoritarian countries, reality-television voting has provided the first opportunity for many citizens to vote in any free and fair wide-scale "elections". In addition, the frankness of the settings on some reality shows presents situations that are often taboo in certain conservative cultures, like "Star Academy Arab World", which began airing in 2003, and which shows male and female contestants living together. A Pan-Arab version of "Big Brother" was cancelled in 2004 after less than two weeks on the air after a public outcry and street protests. In 2004 journalist Matt Labash, noting both of these issues, wrote that "the best hope of little Americas developing in the Middle East could be Arab-produced reality TV".


title: Reality television

text: In 2007, Abu Dhabi TV began airing "Million's Poet", a show featuring "Pop Idol"-style voting and elimination, but for the writing and oration of Arabic poetry. The show became popular in Arab countries, with around 18 million viewers, partly because it was able to combine the excitement of reality television with a traditional, culturally relevant topic. In April 2010, however, the show also became a subject of political controversy, when Hissa Hilal, a 43-year-old female Saudi competitor, read out a poem criticizing her country's Muslim clerics. Both critics and the public reacted favorably to Hilal's poetry; she received the highest scores from the judges throughout the competition and came in third place overall.


title: Reality television

text: In India, in the summer of 2007, coverage of the third season of "Indian Idol" focused on the breaking down of cultural and socioeconomic barriers as the public rallied around the show's top two contestants.