How The Apprentice Sold a Myth to America and What Reality TV Reveals About False Narratives and Disinformation
From Bravo to the Boardroom: How unscripted television shows us the mechanics of disinformation and narrative control
You may not know this about me, but when I’m not spiraling about the state of the world or buried deep in the politics of our day, I decompress by watching mind-numbing trainwrecks on Bravo. Summer House, Below Deck, Real Housewives of Wherever. If it’s chaotic and messy, I’ve probably seen it. Strange as that may seem, it’s my version of rest.
Weirdly, watching these shows has made me better at spotting disinformation because when you really pay attention, it can be a crash course in how narratives are constructed, edited, and sold as truth.
In that space between what actually happened and what made it to our screens, there’s something to learn. Not just about messy confessionals and drama, but about how stories get shaped and take on a life of their own.
Let’s talk about that.
The Narrative Doesn’t Care If It’s True
Once a storyline takes off, whether it’s in a group chat, on social media, or in the news, it doesn’t have to be true to stick.
Think about a typical reality show season. There’s always a bad guy, a comeback, and a surprise twist. The footage might be real, but the story is most definitely edited. Music sets the mood, reaction shots are reused, throw in some confessionals, and even then, a lot of context gets left out. You may feel like you’ve seen the full truth, but really it’s just the version they wanted you to see.
This, my friends, is how conspiracy theories spread and how political smears catch on. Basically, it’s using “perception is reality” and turning it into a weapon.
Once a narrative takes hold, the facts often never catch up.
Editing Is Manipulation.
Every reality show is a masterclass in storytelling control. Who gets to be the hero, who looks unstable, and who barely gets any screen time. It’s all constructed.
And when you start to notice those techniques on TV, you begin spotting them everywhere else.
Trump and Republicans are very good at this. They literally say wacked out shit on camera just to get soundbites they can then share to create a narrative. They shamelessly blast those clips on socials, and it quickly becomes “truth”.
Editing is rarely neutral. At its worst, it can be a form of manipulation, which brings me to…
The Edit That Changed the World
No one benefited more from the “smart businessman” editing job than Donald Trump.
The Apprentice didn’t just clean up his image, it straight-up built a whole new version of him. In the boardroom, he came off as confident, in control, and successful. Every bad decision and idiotic take was cut. The show made him look like a guy who always knew what he was doing.
But in real life, his businesses were a mess. Bankruptcies, lawsuits, money problems, all of it.
Still, the version people saw on TV was so convincing, it helped launch a presidential run. And it worked.
Trump’s the perfect example of how reality show editing, carefully shaped and constantly repeated, can totally change public perception. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true.
And here we fucking are.
What Reality TV Teaches Us About Disinformation
We laugh at how fake reality TV is, but then we turn around and believe headlines at face value and absorb memes as facts.
Reality TV doesn’t just entertain us, it trains us to believe what we’re shown, even when it contradicts what we know.
What we should take from this is that storytelling is powerful. Those who control the edit can control the truth.
So what do we do?
We become smarter consumers by asking who benefits from a specific version of events. Also, to remember that “unscripted” content is still a story someone wants us to believe.
Rage, Rest, and Reality TV
I watch reality TV to decompress but I found it also helps me to stay sharp (or at least that’s what I like to tell myself. This gives me guilt-free permission to consume it when I frame it that way. lol).
Sometimes the most ridiculous shows on television are quietly teaching us how the real world works. Who gets heard, who gets silenced, and what happens when a story becomes more powerful than the truth.
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The Apprentice Wasn’t Just a Show, It Was Propaganda
It’s easy to look back at The Apprentice as a cheesy mid-2000s throwback. Gold lettering, B-list celebrities, and cringey catchphrases. But what aired wasn’t just entertainment, it was image construction. Clever branding and propaganda, in a pinstripe suit.
‘The Apprentice’ was the single biggest factor in putting Trump in the national spotlight.”
Trump is not a successful businessman, he just pretended to be one on TV
By the time The Apprentice launched in 2004, Trump’s real estate empire was already in the shitter. He had filed for bankruptcy multiple times, his casinos were bleeding money, and he was not and never has been a financial genius (or any other kind of genius, stable or otherwise).
He was just a well-known guy selling his name to stay afloat. Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Airlines (good god!), Trump Models…
The show didn’t care. It needed a “boss.”
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