Thanks for a thoughtful piece again, Tracy. This is a thorny area all right. I can definitely understand why we have these laws. I’m always a bit shocked when I go to the US & see no-holds-barred reporting on contemporaneous criminal cases, which sometimes strike be as trial by media. On the other hand, freed one of the press & all that. Doubtless there is a matter of balancing the good & the evil in crime coverage & different jurisdictions will come down on slightly different sides. Of course, as you point out, this is the digital age & these laws were not designed for the age we live in. Or, indeed, if they changed the laws tomorrow, for the world we’d be living in the day after…
Thanks for reading! I’m certainly vastly underqualified to even propose what a better system would look like, and you make an excellent point that laws are always playing catch-up to whatever media is dominant at the time. Now I’m picturing debates over murder ballad performances and murder pamphlet distribution five centuries ago.
Right now Canadians cannot post news content on Facebook because of Zuckerbaby's refusal to monitor fake news, so my ass is also twitching daily. And yes, people should not be kept from reading anything, but ... I guess if your daughter's murder is splashed all over the front pages day after day, with gruesome details? Maybe we can't say "you can't read this," but maybe we should kindly suggest ... I don't know. I'm torn. But I do know that Meg's ass twitched in French Kiss a favoured movie of mine!
First of all, French Kiss! Got it in one! Second of all, thank you for this thoughtful comment. I’m also torn, because let’s be honest, not all (most?) coverage of notorious crimes are 13k-word thought pieces in The New Yorker. But I also just don’t trust the state (or a billionaire) to make that call. Sigh. It’s a sticky wicket.
Such wonderful questions raised both in and by this post.
I'm going to take the questions in the following passage and chatter away: 'But I also think it highlights a question of generic logistics germane to this newsletter: when does journalism become true crime? Is there even a stable difference, and would it matter in the context of banning “reporting and commentary” to protect the integrity of criminal proceedings?'
Personally, I think that there are different kinds of true crime, some of which are journalism and some of which aren't, and that they exist more on a spectrumed, Venn diagram thing than discrete categories. For example, true crime that's also advocacy or history or other things that I'm not thinking of right now. And true crime that's multiple different things, for example, journalism and history, or journalism and advocacy. Or one thing, but not another: true crime that's advocacy but not journalism.
But a difference mattering in the context of banning to protect legal proceedings? I'd need to think about it more, but I think that to the extent any kind of true crime content reports or comments on an ongoing case, it wouldn't be held to different laws than straight-up journalism.
Thank you so much for reading, and for this illuminating concept of a spectrumed, Venn diagram thing! I think it’s true, and additionally quite useful, to think about the *purpose* of a particular true crime text. Is it to inform? To advocate? And I’m afraid some texts aim no further or higher than to entertain? Asking these questions would lead me to categorize the first season of Serial in a different way than the fourth (to harken back to an earlier comment of yours), and both of them as entirely separate from this history of Jack the Ripper I picked up in London. I suppose this is one of the reasons that (to harken back to a fave phrase of mine from the post) when I hear people condemn, or even refer to, “true crime” as one stable thing my ass begins to twitch!
Yes, I agree! I didn't even want to touch on entertainment, but I think you're right that a lot true crime aims no further than to entertain. (I started thinking of *some* of it as "true cringe" one day, but I'm trying to stop.)
Thanks for a thoughtful piece again, Tracy. This is a thorny area all right. I can definitely understand why we have these laws. I’m always a bit shocked when I go to the US & see no-holds-barred reporting on contemporaneous criminal cases, which sometimes strike be as trial by media. On the other hand, freed one of the press & all that. Doubtless there is a matter of balancing the good & the evil in crime coverage & different jurisdictions will come down on slightly different sides. Of course, as you point out, this is the digital age & these laws were not designed for the age we live in. Or, indeed, if they changed the laws tomorrow, for the world we’d be living in the day after…
Thanks for reading! I’m certainly vastly underqualified to even propose what a better system would look like, and you make an excellent point that laws are always playing catch-up to whatever media is dominant at the time. Now I’m picturing debates over murder ballad performances and murder pamphlet distribution five centuries ago.
Right now Canadians cannot post news content on Facebook because of Zuckerbaby's refusal to monitor fake news, so my ass is also twitching daily. And yes, people should not be kept from reading anything, but ... I guess if your daughter's murder is splashed all over the front pages day after day, with gruesome details? Maybe we can't say "you can't read this," but maybe we should kindly suggest ... I don't know. I'm torn. But I do know that Meg's ass twitched in French Kiss a favoured movie of mine!
First of all, French Kiss! Got it in one! Second of all, thank you for this thoughtful comment. I’m also torn, because let’s be honest, not all (most?) coverage of notorious crimes are 13k-word thought pieces in The New Yorker. But I also just don’t trust the state (or a billionaire) to make that call. Sigh. It’s a sticky wicket.
Such wonderful questions raised both in and by this post.
I'm going to take the questions in the following passage and chatter away: 'But I also think it highlights a question of generic logistics germane to this newsletter: when does journalism become true crime? Is there even a stable difference, and would it matter in the context of banning “reporting and commentary” to protect the integrity of criminal proceedings?'
Personally, I think that there are different kinds of true crime, some of which are journalism and some of which aren't, and that they exist more on a spectrumed, Venn diagram thing than discrete categories. For example, true crime that's also advocacy or history or other things that I'm not thinking of right now. And true crime that's multiple different things, for example, journalism and history, or journalism and advocacy. Or one thing, but not another: true crime that's advocacy but not journalism.
But a difference mattering in the context of banning to protect legal proceedings? I'd need to think about it more, but I think that to the extent any kind of true crime content reports or comments on an ongoing case, it wouldn't be held to different laws than straight-up journalism.
Thank you so much for reading, and for this illuminating concept of a spectrumed, Venn diagram thing! I think it’s true, and additionally quite useful, to think about the *purpose* of a particular true crime text. Is it to inform? To advocate? And I’m afraid some texts aim no further or higher than to entertain? Asking these questions would lead me to categorize the first season of Serial in a different way than the fourth (to harken back to an earlier comment of yours), and both of them as entirely separate from this history of Jack the Ripper I picked up in London. I suppose this is one of the reasons that (to harken back to a fave phrase of mine from the post) when I hear people condemn, or even refer to, “true crime” as one stable thing my ass begins to twitch!
Yes, I agree! I didn't even want to touch on entertainment, but I think you're right that a lot true crime aims no further than to entertain. (I started thinking of *some* of it as "true cringe" one day, but I'm trying to stop.)