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David Zaslav hasn't faced any accountability for Discovery covering for Duggars. That's not OK. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-07-30

It’s been almost two months since Amazon Prime released “Shiny Happy People,” the first mainstream effort to turn the hot lights on America’s most infamous babymakers and unfit parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. Unless you have evangelical blinders on, you can’t watch it and not come away realizing that the Duggars pulled a fast one on this country for two decades. They led us to believe they were just a very large and very conservative Christian family. In truth, they subjected their kids—especially their daughters—to heavy-handed and borderline abusive discipline and a homeschooling curriculum that reinforced retrograde views on gender and sex. And of course, they covered up the fact that their oldest son, Josh, molested several girls as a teenager—including his own siblings.

Through all of this, in the absence of something I haven’t heard or seen, there has been nary a comment from Warner Bros. Discovery. That’s hard to understand, given that the Discovery half of the company had no qualms about platforming the Duggars. But in the month since the release of “Shiny Happy People,” WBD hasn’t seen fit to issue so much as a press release about it.

WBD’s silence is even harder to understand given that both the Duggars and Discovery were exposed long before “Shiny Happy People” was more than a pipe dream. Most longtime Daily Kos readers know that I’ve been harping on a 2015 article in Inquisitr that delved into the Duggars’ living conditions at the time the nation discovered them (if you’ll pardon a pun) in 2003. As I note in two articles at my Substack, that article not only exposed the Duggars as unfit parents, but also exposed Discovery for being complicit in the Duggars’ deceit. To my mind, there needs to be accountability—and that accountability needs to start with WBD president and CEO David Zaslav.

While delving into a planned lawsuit by one of Josh’s victims, Inquisitr revealed that at the time the molestation took place, the Duggars were living in a three-bed, two-bath house in Springdale, Arkansas. They’d lived there since 1993, when the Duggars were already up to five kids (and counting). They stayed there even as Michelle gave birth to nine kids in a decade, and gave birth to two more in the years that Discovery Health filmed three specials about them.

With as many as 18 people crammed into a house designed for only six people, there were logistical problems galore. The kids had to take showers in shifts over two days, and even things like brushing teeth became an adventure. But most seriously, with only two beds for a brood that eventually grew to ten boys and six girls, Jim Bob and Michelle got the bright idea to have boys and girls sleep in the same bedroom—and even the same beds.

It would have been—or at least should have been—obvious to anyone that this situation was grossly unsafe and unsanitary. It was also illegal as all hell, and the Duggars knew it. As real estate professionals, Jim Bob and Michelle knew that they were far exceeding the occupancy limits for that house. But Discovery apparently didn’t see a problem with it. Indeed, footage from the Discovery Health specials shows Michelle waking the kids up with boys and girls sharing the same beds.

If that wasn’t enough, Jim Bob had the means to get a better living situation. He was able to plunk down $250,000 cash for a Hail Mary primary challenge to U. S. Senator Tim Hutchinson in 2002—more than enough to buy a decent house in that part of Arkansas at the time. But he also had no problem running for two terms in the state house even though he already had nine children. Combined with the Duggars’ real estate investments, Jim Bob and Michelle’s actions met the legal definition of child neglect in Arkansas.

I’ve tried to find a good-faith explanation for how Discovery could have possibly let this slide—and I can’t find one. You don’t need any training to know that you shouldn’t be doing a show about a family living in conditions like this when the parents have the means to get better. You should be calling the police and social services. The fact that no one either on the production staff or at Discovery’s then-headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland realized there was something really wrong here doesn’t just make Discovery a useful idiot here. They were complicit in an effort by manifestly unfit parents to deceive the viewing public.

The more I thought about it, if Discovery was willing to ignore something like this in plain sight, it’s no wonder that it glossed over a number of other red flags. For instance, while one of the Duggars’ selling points was how angelic their kids were, that angelic demeanor came at a cost. As early as 2011, parenting bloggers were concerned about the Duggars’ endorsement of To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debbie Pearl, which strongly supports spanking kids as a form of discipline—even for something as mundane as “a wrong hunch of the shoulders.”

One has to wonder whether anyone at Discovery watched this clip of the Pearls defending their work on “Anderson” in 2011 in the wake of a number of deaths involving kids who followed their teachings.

Moreover, the Duggars’ guru, disgraced Bible teacher Bill Gothard, long taught that looking unhappy is a sign of disrespect toward your parents. Had anyone at Discovery done even a little bit of digging, it would have been obvious that this was something that they shouldn’t even appear to be promoting.

Before the Inquisitr article came out, there were already some serious questions about how the Duggars were vetted. In light of those questions, you would have thought the news of the Duggars’ living conditions would have triggered a full inquiry into said vetting. But apparently there was none—because the Duggars were greenlighted for “Counting On” even though anyone who put the timeline together should have realized that Jim Bob was willing to let cameras into his home when he damned well knew his family had just endured the equivalent of a five-alarm fire. And yet, Discovery couldn’t cancel “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” fast enough when Mama June started dating a convicted child molester. Where were those standards then?

When all the hyperbole is exhausted, you have a major media company willing to enable a pair of manifestly unfit parents. The result was something you don’t see every day—a complete failure of every safeguard that is supposed to be in place to protect children. And when you have a failure of this magnitude, there must be accountability from the top down. Moreover, when a failure of this magnitude happens, it can only happen when those at the top create an environment for it to happen. Both together? The only way to make this right is for Zaslav to go.

This is harsh, I know. But I’ve only scratched the surface of why Zaslav has to go. For more details, check out my takes on why both the Duggars and Discovery were exposed long before “Shiny Happy People” at Loud, Liberal, Christian, my new Substack. A subscription would be much appreciated, especially a paid one; it helps support my work.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/30/2183602/-David-Zaslav-hasn-t-faced-any-accountability-for-Discovery-covering-for-Duggars-That-s-not-OK

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