The Murky Ethics of Sean Duffy’s New Reality Show

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy owes his celebrity—and his marriage—to a stint on the 1990s reality show The Real World. Now Duffy and his wife, the Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy, are promoting another reality show: The Great American Road Trip, a cross-country journey to landmarks across the United States with the couple’s nine kids in tow. Produced by the same studio behind The Real World, it has been framed by the Department of Transportation as a celebration of the country’s 250th birthday, and is set to launch ahead of July 4.In other ways, though, it’s ill-timed. This plea for Americans to hit the road arrives at a moment when about two-thirds of the country blames the president for rising gas prices, and when many are concerned about the high cost of living. (The war in Iran is pushing up the cost of fuel; according to Rolling Stone’s back-of-the-napkin math, taking Duffy’s route across the country would require about $1,300 in gas money.) Duffy was filmed intermittently over the course of seven months, during which time he was the public face of transportation crises involving debilitating staffing shortages and fatal airplane crashes. The series, which will stream for free on YouTube, is positioned as feel-good, family-focused programming. So far, though, it has mostly generated controversy.Part of the concern has to do with the ethical ambiguities surrounding the project. Duffy has said that no taxpayer money funded the show. Instead, it was paid for by the Great American Road Trip Inc., a nonprofit created last year by Tori Barnes, who has recently lobbied for the transportation industry. The organization’s site lists as “sponsors” several companies that are regulated by DOT, including Toyota, Shell, and Boeing. The nonprofit’s pitch deck