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CBS: From "Harvest of Shame" to Shameless
By John K Hansen, President
Nebraska Farmers Union

In TV's latest race to the bottom, CBS has proposed "The Real Beverly Hillbillies," a new "reality" program which may stain a great page in that network's history.

Four decades ago, in one of TV's finer moments, CBS broadcasted Edward R Murrow's "Harvest of Shame," a documentary which placed the plight of California's farm workers squarely onto the national agenda.

The shame spotlighted by that program was an outgrowth of the vast social discrepancies involved. It was the whole nation's shame-a disclosure of the fact that here in the "new country," land of opportunity, there were hardworking people that reminded us of our own great-grandparents who fled the brutality and tyranny of serfdom in the old country. While affluent growers on large farms profited, the folks working in the fields were living in shacks like serfs. On the evening Murrow's program aired, there was a gut reaction from millions of viewers that no one in America should still have to live that way.

While California's farm workers still have many challenges, the airtime CBS granted their plight made a difference in thousands of lives. CBS helped clothe, feed, and house the farm workers who benefited from the public sympathy generated by the program. Four decades later, CBS has gone from the integrity of "Harvest of Shame" to just plain shameless.

Once again, in "The Real Beverly Hillbillies," CBS will be clothing, feeding and housing some unfortunate rural citizens. This time, however, the attitude of CBS to the vast social discrepancies involved has changed from condemnation to ridicule. The premise of the program is to place a poor rural family of limited means and education into a Beverly Hills mansion with a maid and luxurious amenities, and then laugh at their backwardness. While it is important to bear in mind that no family has been found and the program is in the planning stages, the current climate of "reality" television suggests against giving the network the benefit of the doubt. Considering the highly contrived nonsense passed off as "reality programming" these days, it is doubtful that any good will come of "The Real Beverly Hillbillies."

Yes, there are still farm and rural families struggling to make a decent living, raise their children, and grow our nation's food and fiber. In fact, if CBS was really interested in rural reality TV, they would follow up on the CBS evening news program I appeared on several years ago highlighting a growing problem in rural America--staged accidents that were really suicides. Desperate farmers come to view suicide and cashing in their accidental life insurance policies as the only way to pay off their overwhelming debts, and escape their own unbearable sense of pain and failure. How much pain does a hardworking, proud, and independent man have to be in, to let his combine slowly drive over the top of him?

Suicide, divorce, bankruptcies, forced farm sales, despair, and generations of hard work and sacrifice lost are not funny. Nor is it funny to make fun of folks our nation has left behind. It is even less funny to kick good, hardworking folks when they are down.

Shame on CBS for their shameless and callous exploitation of the folks whose ancestors fired the shot that was heard around the world, and on their sacred honor, pledged their lives and their fortunes to bring the hopes and ideas of the new country to life.