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TALK SHOWS THRIVE ON RAUCOUS CONFRONTATIONS, BUT ARE PRODUCERS DECEIVING PEOPLE TO SET THEM UP FOR HUMILIATION?

SHAUNA MILLER, A 28-YEAR-OLD wife and mother from Livermore, California, was intrigued by the prospect of appearing on the Richard Bey show. The producers had told her she would be reunited with someone from her past. Suspecting it might be an older brother whom she had never met, Miller agreed. But when she was brought onstage, Miller found herself confronting someone else: her younger brother's fiance, Billi Burkett, with whom she had been feuding. Burkett--egged on, she says, by producers, who kept telling her, "You need to get angry"--began shouting at Miller. Among other things, she accused Miller of neglecting Burkett's...

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