A scene from “Public Service Homicide”

McCoy: Even reality TV's biggest fans know that twenty people on a desert island competing for a can of soup or drinking goat's urine for $50,000 is not that real. Lots of people think it's fun, maybe some of you. It's entertainment. Ellie Harper claims she's a journalist. And the motto of a journalist used to be, You two fight, and I'll write about it. But the reporter didn't set up the fight. Nowadays, the distinction between the news and entertainment is not so clear. Staging events for the news cameras, doctoring photographs, planting pseudo-news on the news without a disclaimer. That's not fun. That does real harm. Some of those situations are frustratingly unclear or beyond our reach to correct. But not this case. Ellie Harper was looking for ratings. She knew the danger. But did she care? No. Did she even care enough to send someone along with Hannah Welch in case this staged encounter got out of hand? No. So tell her, and anyone tempted to follow in her footsteps, that an event where one of the participants is trained, paid and armed by the producer is not journalism. And a man being stabbed to death is not entertainment. It's murder.