"Feet to the Fire"

In this age when much of the media has abrogated its responsibility to fact check or follow up or report actual news rather than just regurgitate sensationalist junk and celebrity hairstyles, I'd like to see (and I didn't see this coming) a new reality TV show which could be called "Feet to the Fire".

It would be a sort of hybrid of Consumer Affairs, Media Watch and Mythbusters. On it, people who made outrageous allegations would be on their honour to prove that what they said was true.

Charlatans promoting dodgy health products (as seen on Today Tonight!) would be challenged to put a useful sample of test subjects (selected by an independent panel of scientific and fair minded people) through their regimens to demostrate the veracity of their claims.

"Experts", claiming that young people these days have unrealistic expectations of living in palatial first homes when they should do what people did back in the day and buy modest homes in the outer suburbs, would be presented with several "normal young couples" with average incomes and basic expectations, and the experts would be tasked with finding them properties they could genuinely recommend the "young people" would be able to afford to buy and live in.

And I would love to see some homeopaths go through a double blind study of their magic water where the test subjects were infected with, say, stomach ulcer germs or similar. Hrm. Might be a bit mean, but hey, if they are prepared to stand by their products, who am I to stop them?

I can see that there would be problems with getting people to come on a show like that, but I believe that, if the program had solid credibility, some would be forced to rise to the challenge.