Reality-Show Reality Check
The outcome of The Voice is probably being manipulated by producers
Facebook/The Voice NBC
In case you weren't already aware that reality shows deliver everything but reality, here's more proof: According to a contract obtained by the New York Daily News, NBC's "blind" singing competition The Voice is anything but a fair game. Contestants must sign a 32-page document that essentially gives the show's producers a free pass to do everything from ignore the program's voting system to release a contestant's medical or psychological tests on the air.
"The second clause of this document says to contestants, 'F--k you,'" a legal expert told the Daily News. "And if you missed it, the clauses that follow say, 'F--k you.'"
Contestants on the show legally give NBC carte blanche to "change the rules at any time," "eliminate contestants at any time, even if they are 'winning' with the public", and, perhaps most terrifyingly, depict contestants in a way that "may be disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing [and] may expose me to public ridicule, humiliation, or condemnation."
While we certainly hope that The Voice's contestants read through the long contract and knew what they were getting into before appearing on the show, it is possible that they gave it only a quick skim, as many of us do when we're faced with a long contract of terms and conditions. Let's just hope that they didn't "agree by accident."