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Montel Williams Show breached standards with 'psychic' Sylvia Browne

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Saturday, June 28, 2008

This week the United Kingdom's Ofcom ruled that ITV2 "breached standards" with a repeat of The Montel Williams Show in which Pam and Craig Akers asked "psychic" Sylvia Browne where their son, Shawn Hornbeck, was. Browne told the Akers their son was dead and his body "was in a wooded area near two boulders," but he was later found alive in January 2007.

As a result, Browne and Montel Williams not only received heavy criticism for the failed prediction, but the airing of the show in the U.K. concerned "breaching rule 2.1 of the Broadcasting Code, which relates to protecting viewers against offensive material." The program distributors removed the episode from their stock and apologized for any offense to the public.

Ofcom also concluded "that a demonstration of the paranormal in this case could result in participants acting on information that could be harmful to them and the Hornbecks could have stopped searching for their child, for example."

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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
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