Critics assail “Survivor” creator’s admission

The reality of “reality TV” was being called into question Thursday following reports on Wednesday that Survivor creator Mark Burnett had acknowledged that he sometimes used stand-ins for certain scenes in the series, including one aerial shot of Survivor contestants swimming. The footage of the “body doubles” was used, he said, because the actual scene would have shown the camera crews working on the ground. The New York Post‘s TV writer, Adam Buckman, commented; “The show is looking more and more phony everyday and it’s not likely I’ll be able to watch future editions with the same blind acceptance I brought to the first two.” Burnett’s admission, commented New York Daily News columnist Erik Mink, “calls the credibility of the show into question by forcing people to wonder: What else has been staged, bent, twisted and phonied up to satisfy Burnett’s demanding standards of drama and entertainment?”