kirat submitted a story from Fox News about how in the show Big Brother in Australia, producers are keeping the fact that one of the contestant's father died a secret from her.

Hot houseguest Emma Cornell, a model from Adelaide, is unaware that her dad, Raymond Cornell, died earlier this month after battling cancer. Father and daughter were estranged until recently.

News that Emma was being kept in the dark surfaced last week but the pressure on producers to do something about it is mounting - not least because they worry that word will get to her by some other means. The show's producers have so far refused to break the traditional "BB" ban on letting contestants hear any news from the outside world - including the death of a family member.

Two studio-audience members this week held up a sign reading, "Emma, Your Dad is Dead," before being hustled out and barred for good.

From this point it seems pretty ridiculous that they wouldn't tell her. If anything, it would probably create more drama and ratings from the show's perspective. But it doesn't seem so ridiculous when you get the whole story, and Fox News only has half of it. The rest of the article at the NYPost elaborates (with my emphasis):

Emma didn't see the sign but, according to a recent online survey, over 80 percent of Australian TV viewers still believe she should be told about her dad's death.

Her family, though, says that Emma was aware her dad could die while she was in the "BB" house. They also say it was her dad's dying wish that Emma - to whom he had not spoken in several years - not be disturbed while competing on the show. "He made us promise him that no one would notify Emma of his death," Emma's brother, Matt Cornell, told the Australian press.

"I personally spent the last week of Dad's life by his side and one thing he was absolutely certain about was the fact that he didn't want to impose . . . on Emma's 'Big Brother' experience."

Producers say they'll tell Emma about her dad's death once she's out of the "BB" house. "It will be off-camera . . . it will not be televised, and we will tell her well before she goes out on stage," says co-executive producer Kris Noble.

The incident is eerily reminiscent of what happened here [in the U.S.] in 2001, when CBS' "Big Brother 2" was still airing on Sept. 11. The three remaining houseguests were only given scant details of the attacks - even though contestant Monica Bailey, a candy-store manager from Brooklyn, had a cousin who was killed in the Twin Towers that day.

That's all well and good, but it still seems like a stupid idea not to tell someone news like this. It may affect how the show plays out, but isn't that the whole point anyways? And while she was allright with not hearing any news, that doesn't mean everyone else would be fine with it too, so it shouldn't be a blanket rule.