American Idol looks like it committed "malpractice" by recruiting and shining a spotlight on Claudia Conway

Variety

There was something "jarringly wrong" about Idol promoting the appearance of 16-year-old daughter of former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway and anti-Trump Project Lincoln co-founder George Conway, especially after allegations her mom abused her, says Daniel D'Addario. On Twitter, viewers found the audition by Claudia Conway, who says she was recruited by Idol producers who watched her sing in her TikTok videos, to be cringeworthy. "A series whose long-term mission has been making ordinary people into celebrities now seeks to convert a celebrity into an ordinary person, and to borrow some of her ability to spark conversation along the way," D'Addario says of Idol. He adds: "There’s a winking insistence that all is well here that rankles; this may indeed have been where the Conways were on that day, but using this snapshot as the story of the family’s life in public is both incomplete and unfair to the girl herself. Why, one wonders, is she having such a hard time, if her parents are just so supportive when the cameras are on? The denial of conflict becomes a new sort of conflict — butting up against what we’ve read with the force of state media. In this case, it seems less an endorsement of Kellyanne Conway’s agenda than an endorsement of the concept of not blowing up the story too early; if Claudia were to go on, the producers might play out the string of her family saga for weeks or months to come." ALSO: Some fans accuse Idol of cutting Claudia Conway some slack because she's famous.