Television journalist Diane Sawyer, center, talked to farmers in Pam and Erma’s Restaurant in Bath County on Sept. 2, 1992. An ABC news crew and Sawyer, a Kentucky native, filmed footage for a program on welfare reform. The segment, on ABC’s PrimeTime Live, examined the welfare economy and the chronic shortage of labor on Kentucky tobacco farms. After the piece aired, several Kentucky farmers featured were stunned by the portrayal of rampant abuse. Sawyer and an ABC news crew took hidden cameras to 30 welfare offices and other sites nationwide showing several people cheating the system. John Botts, a Bath County tobacco farmer who was interviewed at Erma and Pam’s Restaurant in Bethel, said the program showed “why our country is in the shape it is in.” Welfare, he said, is a good program, but too many people abuse it. Photo by Tim Sharp | Staff