The problem with hanging out dirty laundry

Many see the TV show as exploitation, but its presenter reckons she was performing a public service

Bai Wanqing got used to listening to the grievances of warring parties and trying to appease them, but it must now be her who feels like the aggrieved party after the authorities took her TV program off the air. Her crime? Fronting an episode of the show on Oct 19 and 20 that, according to an official notice, exerted a bad influence on the public by giving undue attention to the seamier side of human nature.

The formula for the program, New Old Uncle, is fairly simple: its producers gather members of a family or a group of people into a studio where they talk openly about disputes they are having. The central figure in the episode that so offended officialdom was a 22-year-old single mother in Shanghai who has given birth to three children to three different men over the past four years.