A hidden-camera show duped David Masello into helping a girl in a wheelchair across the street:
[The show creators] don't know New York and its people. They don't know that the phenomenon of New Yorkers readily coming to the rescue of others is a common occurrence. Lacking the powers of imagination or insight, they have embraced the wearingly stereotypical notion of the city as an indifferent, selfish place, absent of feeling and empathy. To them, an act of kindness — a stranger helping another stranger in need — is so ludicrous as to make for a joke. As a genre, reality TV runs on cruelty, strife, coarseness, humiliation — but in fact, what they were documenting was a simple act of kindness.
The Dish 