Fall TV Blog

Miley Cyrus may be too young for The Hills, but she’s got a supporter on the MTV show.

“She was probably just swept up in the moment and didn’t realize what she was getting into,” Whitney Port told PEOPLE at Thursday’s Lupus L.A. Orange Ball in Beverly Hills, of Cyrus’s controversialVanity Fair photos. “I can understand how she’s a little bit wary about it.”

Port, who has worked in fashion magazines as well as PR, calls iconic photographer Annie Leibovitz “amazing” – but admits the photos may be a little extreme.

“I think for 15-year-olds, to some people, they’re probably a little inappropriate,” Port, 23, says.
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Call it Desert Storm 2. CBS’ new reality TV show Kid Nation hasn’t even aired (it debuts tonight, 8 p.m.), but controversy is already brewing. The premise: Put 40 kids, ages 8 to 15, in the desert near Santa Fe for 40 days and let them build a “society.” No parents, no school, um, no Wii! Just good old-fashioned hard work from sun-up to sundown. Sounds like Lord of the Flies territory? Some think so. As the show gets set to premiere, child labor activists and New Mexico officials are looking into whether the show and the parents have violated a variety of laws. Did we mention the chickens the youngsters had to slaughter? Tell us: Is all this controversy a recipe for must-see reality TV or has CBS gone too far?

Photo: MONTY BRINTON/CBS