True crime podcasts: Serious journalism, guilty pleasure or harmful voyeurism?

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TRANSCRIPT
“It all began because I, like everyone else, consumed true crime, and I’ve always wondered at what point is it okay for it to be entertainment?”
It’s no secret the genre of true crime has taken on a bit of a life of its own.
In Australia, there are around 124 podcasts that sit in the category of true crime.
Whether it’s delving into a missing persons case or an unsolved murder, there seems to be no shortage of commentary or opinion on ‘whodunnit?’
Cypriot Australian writer Cassandra-Elli Yiannacou has transformed the concept of a podcast into a play, questioning where exactly the line is when it comes to consuming people’s tragedies as entertainment.
Premiered at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Years Years Bears explores what exactly attracts us to true crime.
“It usually is the gory bits. It’s usually the victim is no more than the name and an age and then immense detail on the murderer. And I think really trying to engage with the way that story’s being told, and if there is a way to ethically consume it, maybe there isn’t, but I think an awareness of that there is somebody’s real life out of there and not looking at it so much as something to entertain us as background noise.”
If we look at the history of crime stories, there has always been an audience and public interest for these types of stories, whether it’s journalism or a Nancy Drew mystery.
However, senior journalism lecturer from Latrobe University Dr Nasya [[nah-shuh]] Bahfen, says there is still structural discrimination within the media.
“True crime reporting often falls into that trap of glamourising certain perpetrators of crime, and we see that in the case of people who are missing, for example, we know of white woman syndrome in the United States where somebody’s gender and skin color will play a factor in how much attention is devoted to their cases. In places like Canada where you see lots and lots of First Nations or Indigenous women being abused, being killed, or going missing, nowhere near the resources are devoted to them as they should, both in terms of media attention, but also in terms of law enforcement and resources.”
For some true crime podcasters, getting to the bottom of what happened is their main goal.
Jay Walkerden co-founded his own podcast company, Podshape, where he has produced more than 15 shows focusing on themes of true crime.
“From what we understand is that people want a long form view and to make their own decision. We’ve tried, certainly in the Eden podcast, we’ve tried to go, here’s all the information that we’ve been able to gather from the family, from court docs, from things that may or may not have been released.” 
Podshape’s most recent venture is a podcast hoping to bring an Australian perspective to a high-profile American case.
The Menendez brothers have been prominent in the media after a Netflix series depicting their case was released in September this year.
“We went about actually reaching out to their lawyer and on the off chance that an independent podcaster in Australia would get an interview with probably one of the more high profile cases in the world. And Cliff Gardner, who’s their appellate lawyer, actually came back to us and we had an amazing couple of hours conversation with Cliff, and he gave us the insight into everything that’s happening right now with the habeas corpus writ and the one that’s just been passed by the DA in California that is soon to be going to court to see whether the brothers will get parole.”   
The ‘Monsters’ TV show by Ryan Murphy has brought a 35-year-old case back into the spotlight and a re-sentencing hearing scheduled for the brothers in December.
However, Dr Bahfen thinks we should question why some cases get more media attention than others.
“Of course, the Menendez brothers who were incredibly wealthy and incredibly privileged, but they lived during a time when people didn’t really accept that boys could be sexually abused by their parents. And so you get a whole series of factors at play, but I think it’s because they ticked a lot of the boxes of desirable or good victims of crime that then they become the front and the center of the whole affair. So that’s why I think a lot of the time reporting on crime does need to be victim led, but in terms of who is the victim, unfortunately the media has its own set of standards of as to who is the preferred victim.”
She believes journalists are most equipped to investigate a case and portray a story ethically when it comes to true crime podcasts.
“If they trained as journalists, they have a good grasp of media law as it relates to defamation, as it relates to contempt of court, but apart from law, they also have a good grounding in media ethics. And so they don’t tend to get too close to the people who they’re interviewing. For example, they’re aware of the issues around reporting stories of victims of child sexual abuse or victims of sexual assault, for example. So they’re aware of those types of ethics theoretically, and we know that within these news organizations, producers of podcasts have access to lawyers, they have access to people who can advise them on whether a crime story is in danger of being in contempt of court because the person that they’re talking about as part of the story might have an ongoing court case.”
Mr Walkerden says a lot of ethical considerations are common sense.
“There are things that we leave out of shows based on some of those ethical things that we think through and go, we don’t know if that’s needed. We don’t need to add that bit. One, doesn’t add anything to the story. Two, it doesn’t feel right. So, I think most of it’s common sense, most of it is thinking about how you approach a story with empathy and deliver it in that same way, especially with the types of stories we’re telling.”
As someone who engages with true crime podcasts in both their investigative and entertainment forms, Miss Yiannacou thinks both have a place within the genre.
“I do think, obviously there’s a line between investigative journalism and True Crime podcast as entertainment, and I think any True Crime podcast would also draw that line themselves. I don’t think they probably necessarily consider themselves journalists and nor should they because they’re not having to be bound by the same sort of criteria that a journalist would have to be bound by.”
In a world of rapid-fire information, people are becoming more and more desensitised when it comes to consuming entertainment.
“I think it’s always really worth considering the perspective being offered when you are reading about the death of someone and why we find the death of people so entertaining and why it’s so interesting I guess.”
And If this program raises any issues for you, or someone you know, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 for assistance, or talk to someone you trust.