The Ethics of True Crime: An Overview
This article was written by one of our Young Reporters, a scheme that gives 14 to 18-year-old school students a chance to write for a real newspaper. Find out more at the Young Reporter website.
In the golden age of true crime, we aren’t just listeners; we’re participants in the exploitation of tragedies to fill a hole of a lack of entertainment.
When you spend forty hours a week with a podcast host whispered into your noise-canceling headphones, a strange psychological phenomenon takes place: the parasocial relationship.
You start to feel like you know them, it is downhill from here.
You laugh at their inside jokes, you trust their moral compass, and you feel a fierce loyalty to their brand.
However, this perceived intimacy is a one-way street down a slippery slope that creates a dangerous "blind spot" when it involves the ethics of real-world tragedy.
This one-sided friendship creates a "halo effect" around the narrator.
This is because we feel a personal connection to the host, we stop questioning their methods.
If they crack a joke during a grizzly autopsy report, we perceive it as "coping humor" between friends rather than a lapse in professional empathy.
This bond makes us feel like we are part of an exclusive club of "truth-seekers," which can quickly morph into a mob mentality.
When a host points a finger at a "suspicious" witness, their audience often follows suit, fueled by a misplaced sense of loyalty to the person behind the microphone.
The darkest part of the parasocial trap is the sense of collective ownership.
Fans often feel they are "owed" updates, more gore, or a definitive ending to a story, as if the victim’s life is a serialized drama produced for their social circle.
This pressure forces creators to prioritise "content" over human dignity.
When we treat a grieving mother or a traumatized survivor as a character in our favorite host's latest "yarn," we aren’t being empathetic friends.
We are participating in a digital spectacle that treats the worst day of someone’s life as a casual conversation over a meal.
In addition, the monetisation of this content (often without familial consent) is extremely unethical.
Everytime we interact with this content we condone behaviour that would not be appreciated if we were in the same position.
