Tyler Henry

Tyler Henry Koelewyn (born January 13, 1996) is an American reality show personality who appears in the series Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry as a "clairvoyant medium." The series began broadcast on the E! Television Network in the United States in January 2016, and was E!'s largest launch of a non-spinoff unscripted series in the past three years with 3.2 million viewers for its third episode.

Critics Susan Gerbic, Hemant Mehta, Steven Novella, Sharon Hill, David Gorski, Mark Edward, Ryan Houlihan, and Bobby Finger maintain that Henry's readings are performed using deceptive cold and hot reading techniques, and not "psychic" powers. They also criticize his TV show for targeting people who are grieving and vulnerable, and exploiting them for entertainment.

In 2015, the Independent Investigations Group awarded Henry's show the Truly Terrible Television Award "...in acknowledgment of the extraordinary ongoing deceit of the American public represented in this television program..." In 2016, Nicki Swift released a video, "Proof That Hollywood Medium Is Totally Fake", where she provides details of how Henry's "psychic readings" are actually accomplished.

Early life

Henry is a native of Hanford, California, a small rural suburb just outside Fresno.

After giving readings to students and teachers at Hanford's Sierra Pacific High School, from which he graduated on an accelerated academic program, Henry initially aspired to attend college and become a hospice nurse. However, Henry soon was "discovered." Before long, he gained a celebrity clientele and a reality TV development deal. Henry began filming his E! television series when he was 19 years old; the show began airing a week after his 20th birthday. Henry reportedly welcomes skepticism about his work: "I am content with people asking questions," he told the Fresno Bee. Henry is openly gay.

Career

Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry premiered on E! on January 24, 2016. After a successful premiere, E! ordered two additional episodes, making it 10 episodes total. The show airs Sunday nights at 10 pm. In March 2016, It was announced that E! had ordered a second season of the show.

In March 2016, E! reported that Henry was writing his first memoir with Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The book publisher told E! that the book "will reveal what living life as a medium is really like—from opening up about discovering his gift as a young teen to what it's truly like to communicate with the departed. He also discusses the difficulty he had accepting his rare talents and the courage it took to share them with the world."

Henry has given readings to a number of celebrities, such as retired NBA player John Salley and actors Monica Potter, Tom Arnold, Amber Rose, and Rob Dyrdek.

Criticism

Susan Gerbic, a skeptical activist, has dismissed Henry as one of many "grief vampires" who have gained recent cultural notoriety, and she is particularly critical of Henry's stated aspiration of offering counseling to parents who have lost children to suicide, a practice Gerbic describes as "prey[ing] on families when they are the most desperate and vulnerable." Gerbic describes the performances as "a fabric of lies," saying that people like Henry "prey on the poor and disaffected."

Sharon Hill of Doubtful News and the 15 Credibility Street podcast has also been critical of Henry, stating "It's hardly a 'skill' to guess at celebrities' lives," noting that his apparent successes on the show are "craftily edited" for television audiences.

"What Henry's doing isn't entertainment" states activist Hemant Mehta, "it's deception." Mehta doubts that Henry will submit to scientific trials, and feels that he is "just the latest telegenic star on a network dedicated to celebrating vapid people."

Neurologist Steven Novella states that psychics like Henry are "grief vampires" who say they are giving comfort to grieving families: "Henry wishes to inject made up BS. He is not a trained counselor, and working with the grieving is very tricky. The potential for harm is tremendous."

David Gorski of ScienceBlogs writes that if Henry restricted his readings to celebrities as entertainment, then that would be harmless, but Henry wants to work with grieving parents whose children have committed suicide. "Likely the producer of his show is looking for such grieving parents right now, fodder for the grief vampire, to be shown for the morbid entertainment of the masses."

Huffington Post entertainment writer Cole Delbyck criticized the show and Henry's claims to connect celebrities with their deceased loved ones, saying, "from the previews, it looks fairly exploitative and tasteless."

Mentalist Mark Edward and Gerbic commented on the readings Henry gave to Ross Matthews, Margaret Cho, Jodie Sweetin and Jillian Rose Reed. They state that Henry does not need to know whom he is reading in advance as "it appears to be nothing more than lukewarm cold reading, flattery and generalities." The sitters in the post interviews claimed that Henry had been very specific, but Gerbic and Edward could not find one single hit, noting errors in memory for each sitter.

Bobby Finger calls Hollywood Medium "the worst show on television" and a "deceptively cruel little experiment in exploitative programming." He analyzed an episode in which Henry met with Carole Radziwill and showed that everything Henry told her was easily accessible public information. He concludes "The loss of a loved one causes its own special, terrible category of pain, and to exploit someone’s grief in a way that presents the afterlife as this bleak, murky place where our dead friends and family members are constantly on the hunt for people like the Hollywood Medium . . . to spread a message that is almost without fail, 'I’m fine,' doesn’t just con their desperate, mournful targets out of a few hard-earned dollars, it does a disservice to the memories of those they lost."

Susan Gerbic agrees with Finger that "this is not innocent fun." She analyzed that same episode and came to an only slightly different conclusion. She states that Henry doesn't need to have advanced knowledge of his sitters "because he just needs to throw out general statements and then remain silent while the sitter fills in the details." She looks at the specific time when Radziwill handed Henry a woman's gold ring and Henry states that the ring is a reference to someone who died at an early age, then asked if she knew anyone who fit that. Radziwill said, "“yeah [pause] a girlfriend [pause] her name is Carolyn.” Gerbic points out that "These pauses are important to note. This is where Henry is just letting the sitter talk and dropping all the information he is going to need."

Gerbic also did a very detailed analysis of a YouTube video uploaded by E! in which Henry met with a fan, Jamie Horn. Horn says about her reading “It was amazing and emotional!” But Gerbic points out, "She does not have the ability at that moment to pause, back up, and really think about what he is saying. She isn’t even able to ask questions or take notes. We have that ability. . . I can look at her expressions and body language and take notes all the way through." Gerbic does not believe that Henry was using any hot reading in this case, pointing out that there were almost no specific hits, just very general statements that lead Horn to give up information. "This man, who Henry has now learned is Horn’s father, wants to acknowledge a Bob, Bobby or Robert. Horn explains that her husband’s name is Robert. Sounds like a hit, right? . . . [Horn] probably thinks her father reached out to her husband Robert. But Henry did not say the older man was her father, he learned that when Horn said so. And Henry did not say that Robert was her husband."

In 2015, the Independent Investigations Group awarded Henry's TV show the "Truly Terrible Television Award", which read:

In recognition of the lack of scientific integrity, and in acknowledgment of the extraordinary ongoing deceit of the American public represented in this television program, the IIG is unfortunately obligated to present this award to Hollywood Medium for truly terrible television 2015.

In a 2016 article "The Hollywood Medium has a secret," Ryan Houlihan describes and analyses the Tyler Henry phenomenon from a skeptical perceptive. He explains how Tyler uses cold reading, and likely hot reading techniques as well, to give the illusion of psychic powers. Houlihan attributes Henry’s success to the gullibility of celebrities as well as the media: "Henry’s shtick is polished, but it only works because he has such great support. Besides the celebrities he interviews, Henry seems to have the full-throated endorsement of the entertainment press." Houlihan concludes his article with:

If Henry can truly speak to the dead, it would be the most important discovery in the history of the world. But rather than take his gift to scientists or religious leaders, Henry has decided to speak to actors about their grandmothers and deceased pets on a reality show. Before this story published, The Outline asked Henry’s publicist one last time if he could prove his abilities. We did not get a response.

In December 2016, Nicki Swift released a video, "Proof That Hollywood Medium Is Totally Fake", where she provides a point-by-point analysis of how Henry's "psychic readings" are actually accomplished, stating that "It may not come as a surprise, but Hollywood Medium's Tyler Henry may not be the clairvoyant and medical intuitive he says he is.

Rebuttal

However, some people, citing personal experience, would disagree with the above-mentioned criticism:

Three Buzz Feed writers claimed that Henry had no idea who he would be reading (thus reducing the chances he could Google search them), had not ever met him, and had no contact until the time of the reading and yet were very accurate.

E! News documented several accurate predictions, including a "location change" for one wedding, which came true when the wedding venue due to the possibility of rain, as well as accurately predicting that actor Tom Arnold and his wife would have a child.

Moreover, Henry created quite a stir in numerous news media reports when he accurately predicted that Canadian actor, Alan Thicke would have health issues with his heart, even though Thicke clearly could not have known that given his family history, which did not have much in the way of heart health issues.

External links

• Tyler Henry Spanish Biography