'20/20' Adoption show gets personal

Five couples vie to adopt a teen's baby in this episode.
By DAVID BIANCULLI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Not everything should be on television.
Barbara Walters proves that Friday night with a special edition of "20/20" titled "Be My Baby," in which five couples compete for the right to adopt the baby of a pregnant teenager.
At one point, Walters herself looks into the camera and says: "You may be thinking, 'Wait a minute. Five couples competing for one baby. Sounds like a reality show!'"
Yes, it does sound like that, which is why early promos -- which made the show seem like a spinoff of "The Bachelor" -- ignited a firestorm this week when some radio jocks bashed Walters & amp; Co.
Even though the premise sounds repugnant, the hour isn't quite as bad as it sounds.
The "competition" isn't the end of the report -- as suggested in the early on-air spots.
Instead, the decision on the parents is earlier on. The rest of the program is the reality part of this "reality show" variant.
But there are moments during this ABC show that are so intimate, so personal, they should not be shown on television.
Price of dignity
Fifty years ago, the TV show "Queen for a Day" had housewives compete to see who was the most pathetic; the winner walked away with a few bucks, a washing machine and no dignity whatsoever.
The structure for this adoption selection made it sound like "Mother for a Lifetime."
Fox would be proud. Edward R. Murrow wouldn't.
For me, the most intrusive and abrasive moment in this "20/20" wasn't 16-year-old Jessica from Akron, looking through scrapbooks to select five families to compete for the right to raise her child ("I was kind of playing God," she says).
It wasn't one potential father likening the proceedings -- one 30-minute meeting between Jessica and each interested couple -- to "The Bachelorette."
Or the way their answers to the initial question are intercut, making these real-life adoption interviews look creepily like the job interviews in the penultimate episode of "The Apprentice."
Here's the moment I won't forget, and can't forgive, from "Be My Baby."
It's the moment when Jessica, cradling her newborn, has the transfer contract placed in front of her on the hospital bedside table. At that moment, when she has to decide whether to keep her promise or her baby, tears flood out of her, dropping directly on the child.
That's something I didn't need to see, something so private I don't think anyone outside that room necessarily needs to see it, either.
Walters, who adopted a daughter years ago, reports that, at that moment, up to 30 percent of all women considering giving their babies up for adoption change their minds.
This moment certainly puts a face to that statistic -- but this is a sequence, to me, that is up close and too personal.
Under Ohio law, Jessica has 72 hours in which to reverse her decision and keep her baby.
The "20/20" cameras watch her, and the selected parents-to-be, the whole time. There also are additional visits, with all five couples, to see where their lives stand a few months later.