The New True Crime

The New True Crime
Original Publication Date:
Transcript URL: share.descript.com/view/QWoFx383Nq0
Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, we had the pleasure of interviewing Diana Rickard, the brilliant author behind the groundbreaking book, "The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence." Diana took us on a captivating journey through the world of true crime narratives and how they have evolved with the advent of serialized storytelling. Diana shared her deep insights into the impact of these gripping narratives on our perception of innocence, drawing from her extensive research and expertise. We delved into the ethical considerations surrounding the portrayal of real-life criminal cases in serial formats, exploring the blurred lines between entertainment and journalism.
#TrueCrimeEvolution #SerializedStorytelling #InnocenceInFocus #CrimeNarratives #AuthorInterview
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Begin Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.
I want to welcome everyone back to Organized Crime and Punishment. This time it is just me, Steve, uh, here. Uh, we don't have Mustache Chris, but I am very excited to be joined by Professor Diana Ricard, who is an associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences, Human Services, and Criminal Justice at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, which is a [00:01:00] part of CUNY.
And she is the author of another book, Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control. But in particular today, we are going to talk about her latest book. The New True Crime, How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling is Transforming Innocence. It's a fascinating book, and I think maybe the, uh, how we can start this out is maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe where the genesis of this book came from.
Oh, I'm... Very actually excited to talk about that because, um, it came from my interest in wrongful conviction, which actually came from a personal connection of a family member of a friend of mine and an interest in where wrongful conviction fits into different. Concerns in criminal justice or criminal justice reform or criminal justice issues, and I kind of had [00:02:00] trouble as a researcher finding where my place was in the conversation, in part, because there's so much good journalism, like, as an academic and a scholar, it was hard for me to find what I could contribute when there's, you know, the innocence project has so Um, offered so many important case studies and analysis, and there's so much really good stuff out there if you, if you look and in that search, um, I just became aware of these amazing documentaries and I, and more and more people were mentioning them to me, um, in my introduction to the book, I, I talk about how people kept telling me I should listen to cereal.
I should listen to cereal. And when I saw Making a Murderer in December of 2015, so quickly, there was a huge outcry in response to that. I knew I had something [00:03:00] here about the synergies between entertainment, wrongful conviction, true crime, journalism, news. You know, popular culture and, um, that's how I got started in this podcast.
We're really trying to not follow the standard true crime genre that we're trying to inject it with looking at it historically and maybe trying to be a little bit more objective. And I wonder. Uh, is it possible, this is one of the things that you brought up and it's, it's always been in the back of my mind is it, can you be entertaining and objective at the same time?
Do you have to create a narrative, which by its whole definition has to have good guys and bad guys, protagonists, antagonists? So I don't think I, I don't think being objective and being entertaining are necessarily in [00:04:00] conflict, but what the reason I chose the specific series I focus on is because they open up the problem of perspective of point of view.
And I'm really fascinated, fascinated by how they destabilize what is truth. And they make us question who has the authority over truth. So I chose only cases. I did not choose documentaries that covered cases where the person had been exonerated. So the, I chose to look at documentaries where the journalists or entertainers, because it is, these are absolutely.
Acting as entertainment, um, question the official outcomes and unpack those in a way that raises so many questions. And a lot of people come away from these convinced that the person is guilty, convinced that the person is [00:05:00] innocent, but what these. Series have done is explode our sense of faith in in the certainty of these verdicts.
So I think even, you know, a lot of these are criticized for, for not being objective or definitely for, you know, excluding this response that the prosecutor had, or not talking to this person or sensationalizing. This person. Um, but the other thing they do is they also make us aware of those things. You know, so I don't think any of the filmmakers or that Sarah Koenig of Serial would say, Oh, yes, I have the final word.
And this is, you know, the complete, objective, definitive truth or version of the truth. What do you think with, um, in our society, you discuss it and it's something that I've definitely seen. I've seen it in very stark terms, the schizophrenia. [00:06:00] That we have with crime. And I, uh, I'm a teacher by trade and my first job out of teaching school was teaching at a maximum security prison and we would have a movie day and we were watching, uh, you know, a standard, uh, Crime film, and they were all on the side of the police, and I think that that's something that in as probably America.
I don't know outside of America, but we can just focus on America. We're both want to be tough on crime, but we also don't want innocent people to get railroaded. How do we put those 2 ideas together? So the, the word you use schizophrenia, I would call more ambivalence and conflict and, you know, are kind of warring sentiments and, um, and also how we can be led to sympathize with the different.
Characters, you know, again, getting back to whose [00:07:00] perspective we're looking at. Um, I, I teach this issue. I was just in my class the other day discussing what we call the crime control model versus the due process model, which is get the bad guys at whatever cost. Or worry about the civil liberties of the defendants, even if that that means, you know, tying the hands of prosecutors and, you know, I think.
I think we have to look at these things, both, you know, an individual case by case basis, but also what I encourage my readers to do, or I hope they take away is look at the broader cultural context because, you know, right now our. Um, political, you know, right now we see these conflicts between politicians that are running on law and order and politicians that are running on, on racial justice.
And, um, the way we understand the individual issues are also being [00:08:00] framed in this broader issue. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think you're really getting to something there that. It's those two ideas, at least to me, don't have to be completely separate. You can be tough on crime, but also we …