The ethics of making (or even watching) a true crime series
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English lesson number 524. It’s Monday, November 28, 2022. JR is the producer and he has uploaded this full lesson to PlainEnglish.com/524.
Coming up today: True crime is all the range. But not all “true” crime is the same, and some productions are more true than others. What should storytellers keep in mind when producing these shows? Or, for that matter, what should audience members keep in mind as we watch? In the second half of the lesson, I’ll share what it means to “go about your business.” And we have a quote of the week. Let’s get started.
Ethics of making (and watching) true crime
The public is fascinated with “true crime,” and although true crime movies and series are popular now, it’s not a new genre. In fact, there’s an expression from the earliest days of print journalism: “if it bleeds, it leads.” That means that the newspaper-buying public of the early Twentieth Century wanted to read stories about blood and crime. And they wanted those stories to be true—or, basically true.
“True crime” today is a wide-ranging genre. Last week, we talked about the fictionalized series “Monster,” about the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and his victims in Milwaukee in the 1980s and 1990s. It was Netflix’s second-most-popular English-language series just weeks after it was released.
But the genre includes other forms, too. Some are documentaries: “Making of a Murderer” on Netflix and “The Jinx” on HBO are two of the most popular documentary-form shows. The podcast “Serial” from 2014 is a true-crime podcast in several seasons. The first season was about the murder of a girl in Baltimore.
Some true crime focuses on business crimes. “The Dropout,” which I watched, tells about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos . Her blood-testing company was found to be fraudulent. Another, “Dopesick,” fictionalizes the company responsible for pushing opioids on millions of American consumers.
Then, there are shows like “Cops,” in which cameras ride along with police as they go about their—often dramatic—business . And in the U.S., some news programs, like “America’s Most Wanted” and “Dateline” talk exclusively about true crime. These are journalism, but they are sensational, entertainment journalism. There are entire television networks that are based on low-budget true crime, too.
But let’s go back to the most popular modern form of true crime—the big-budget series and movies you see on streaming platforms, where actors play the main characters. In these shows, the crimes are dramatized by actors. The actors portray the criminals, yes. But actors play the victims. They play victims’ families. Actors play police and prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, witnesses, neighbors, passers-by .
There are a couple of criticisms of the true-crime productions like this. First, critics say the stories are not always true to real life.
In most cases , the dialogue, the specific actions, can’t be known for sure. So producers of true crime have to invent the dialogue and fill in the holes. And, as we discussed last week, they sometimes take liberties with the story to make it a better story.
I think I am basically okay with this, under a few conditions. If it’s clear that it’s fictionalized, and if it stays basically true to the story, then this is fine. Nobody will ever know the words Jeffrey Dahmer spoke to his victims—we all know that dialogue is invented. But it’s the producers’ responsibility to get this as close to reality as possible. In the Dahmer series, I wish they hadn’t exaggerated the good and evil, as I said in Thursday’s lesson. But I do think they got this mostly correct.
Another criticism goes like this: True crime only re-traumatizes the families of the victims. A big corporation like Netflix re-opens old wounds just so they can make millions of dollars re-traumatizing people who have already suffered enough.
Much of the Dahmer criticism is along these lines. These families suffered enough. All the information is in the public record. There have already been documentaries, books, and movies. The world doesn’t “need” another series about Jeffrey Dahmer. The only reason Netflix is doing this now is to make money off victims’ suffering. And by the way, the victims’ families don’t like how they were portrayed in the film.
This is an understandable criticism—but it is not justified. It’s important to have compassion for survivors. But victims’ families cannot have a veto over how stories get told. If they did, then nothing would get made. And nobody likes how they’re portrayed on television; that’s just a fact of life.
What about the idea that this production didn’t “need” to be made, because the facts are all known? Of course it didn’t “need” to be made; no story does. Neither did Jurassic Park “need” to be made. How many World War II movies exist—did any of those “need” to be made? I mean, we already know what happened, right?
The fact is, artists and storytellers—whether they’re authors, filmmakers, or podcast producers—they have the right to re-tell stories, with new perspectives and new ideas. There is no copyright on publicly-known facts.
Storytellers, though, do have an obligation to stay as close to the truth as possible, or they risk discrediting their entire profession. There will always be an artistic point of view, different interpretations of the same facts, and other variations in how stories are told. But storytellers that gratuitously exaggerate good and evil, change key facts to fit a narrative, run the risk of losing credibility and doing unjustified damage to peoples’ reputations.
I also think that viewers have a responsibility, too. There’s a new niche of journalism that closely tracks the true-crime genre: journalists watch these series and then publicly correct the record on any inconsistencies with the truth. As a viewer, I think you should sit back and enjoy the show. But before you assume it’s all true, read some of those articles that point out the differences between the story and the truth. And as you watch a fictionalized story, remember that it’s entertainment. If you want to know the facts, research the facts—they’re out there. But if all you want to do is watch the show, then don’t assume everything you’re watching is true.
Echoes of ‘Stillwater’ movie
You might remember I raised some of these questions when I watched the movie “Stillwater.” We talked about that in Lesson 395 . This was a very fictionalized movie, very loosely—and I mean very loosely—based on a real-life case involving a woman named Amanda Knox.
And I had a little bit of a problem with this—don’t get me wrong, the movie was great. But the producers, when promoting the movie, weren’t shy about saying, “Based on the Amanda Knox story,” Amanda Knox, Amanda Knox, Amanda Knox. But then when the real-life Amanda Knox piped up and said, you know, a lot of this really isn’t true—the producers said, “Oh, well, this is totally fiction, totally made up, don’t blame us.”
And I said at the time, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t ride the wave of publicity by using this woman’s name, and then—when confronted with some major inconsistencies—then you turn around and hide behind the idea that it’s totally fiction? I don’t think that’s right.
I thought they should have released that movie without ever saying the name Amanda Knox because the movie was fiction—and I mean it was more than 50 percent fiction. And as a viewer, I don’t like being put in a position where I feel deceived.
So that’s when I first got this idea that the viewer also has some responsibility. I said after watching the movie, I felt it was my obligation to go and research more of what happened, so that I didn’t walk away thinking “Stillwater” was the real Amanda Knox story. And I’m glad I did. So if you want to hear more about that, go back and listen to Lesson 395.
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