Criticisms and Tax Questions re: Oprah’s Big Give

Last week we reported on the charitable efforts of “Oprah’s Big Giveaway.”  We noted that the “charitable hue” had Oprah’s show nipping at the audience share heels of “American Idol.”  American Idol did something similar a year ago.  Oprah’s not to be outdone, I guess.  It’s hard to put into words the lingering unseemliness of reality shows that build audience share on the backs of charity.  After all, why bregrudge the lucky few who benefit from the show at iota-fracations of the amounts paid to the entertainers.  But there are a few voices in the wilderness who have done so.  Here is an excerpt from one New York TV critic opnion:

Some scenes in “Oprah’s Big Give,” where contestants are handed cash to help people in need, showcase the most generous part of the human spirit.  Other scenes, too many, feel unsettling and almost voyeuristic. “Oprah’s Big Give” turns charity into a competition. In the process, it also turns beneficiaries into markers – and while the help they receive is genuine and doubtless valued, that’s the discomforting part . . .

In Sunday’s opener, all the teams raise money with showy, flashy events that put the beneficiary’s situation on display for potential donors. That’s fine when a neighborhood or a community rallies to help one of its own. It feels different when someone’s misfortune is laid out on national television for millions of people who have no personal stake and will not be helping, but essentially are checking out the story as if it were a wreck on the side of Highway 61.  It conjures memories of “Queen for a Day,” the early TV show that showered prizes on the woman who came to the studio with the saddest story. The price she paid for those prizes was to become an object of pity for millions of strangers.  Most wealthy people, very likely including Oprah, do much of their charitable work quietly, and there’s a reason for that. People victimized by terrible events and circumstances often feel pride and dignity are two of the few things they have left.  There are times in “Oprah’s Big Give” when it feels like those things may be slipping away, in the service of creating a splashier television show.  What Oprah cannot control, of course, is the true outrage suggested by the “Big Give”: Why should a wounded soldier have to rely on TV-show charity to put his life back together? Where are, say, the people who sent him to fight?

The legal/tax lesson in all of this:  Giving to a tax exempt charity even through a falsely altruistic television show garners a tax deduction, but giving money directly too a “needy” beneficiary does not.  I am not even sure the beneficiary can exclude the “booty” from gross income, there being no “detached and distinterested generority” in Oprah’s Big Give, and most certainly no generosity in scowling Simon Cowell!  For another critical take on the unseemly, see yesterday’s online article from the Canadian paper The Star.  The writer there said, “the show reinforces the idea that charity matters more when people are watching – and even more so when there’s a chance to meet celebrities like actors Jennifer Aniston, John Travolta and Jada Pinkett Smith, tennis star Andre Agassi and skateboarder Tony Hawk, who are among the stars slated to help out on the show.”

dkj