The Jerry Springer Show - Controversies Over Authenticity and Violence

Controversies Over Authenticity and Violence

In the late 1990s, the show was quite popular and controversial, so much so that it caused contemporaries like Jenny Jones, Maury Povich, and Ricki Lake to "revamp" their own shows in order to improve ratings. However, major figures in television, along with many religious leaders, had called for the show's removal and considered it to be of bad taste.

In 1997 and 1998, the show reached its ratings peak, at one point becoming the first talk show in years to beat The Oprah Winfrey Show. It featured almost non-stop fighting between guests—5 to 12 per day during one April 1998 week—and other TV personalities and priests complained. Chicago City Council suggested that if the fistfights and chair-throwing were real, then the guests should be arrested for committing acts of violence in the city, as alderman Ed Burke was concerned over the fact that the off-duty Chicago police officers serving as security guards for the program failed to take legal action against fighting guests. Springer explained that the violence on the program "look real" to him, also arguing that the fighting on the show "never, ever, ever glamorizes violence". Ultimately, the City Council chose not to pursue the matter. Because of this probe and other external and internal pressures, the fighting was taken off the show temporarily before being allowed again in a less violent nature. In the years of the show having toned down the fights, viewership has declined but remains respectable by newer standards of daytime television ratings. There has been continuous debate over the authenticity of the fighting. In an interview, a production assistant stated that "we try our hardest to screen people," and inauthentic-seeming guests have been kicked off stage. Marvin Kitman, television critic for the Newsday newspaper, felt that the fighting had been choreographed beforehand. Christopher Sterling of the George Washington University media department compared the program to professional wrestling; in fact many of the producers later on admitted the fights in the show were inspired by the fights and angles in the WWF. Sixteen former guests of The Jerry Springer Show, who were interviewed on various U.S. media outlets such as the entertainment news program Extra, Rolling Stone magazine, and The New York Post newspaper, even claimed there was a "fight quota" for each episode and that they and other guests were encouraged to fight one another. In the past, producers have even booked professional wrestlers such as The Iron Sheik, Jamie Dundee, 2 Tuff Tony, Madman Pondo, and One Man Kru (also a hip hop artist), as well as lady wrestlers and midget wrestlers. Springer himself even admitted in an October 2000 interview with the Reuters news agency:

I would never watch my show. I'm not interested in it. It's not aimed towards me. This is just a silly show.