True Crime: Is True Crime Media Unethical?

Is true crime media ethical?

Everyone loves watching true crime stories about serial killers, but do we ever think about the victims and their families while we consume these things? Of course, we do, but not because we are concerned about them and how that show/podcast could affect them, but because they are mentioned in the media we consume. Lately, many fans of true crime have noticed that their obsession with the genre has been a bit concerning. They are now beginning to question if their love for the true crime genre is ethical. Not all true crime media is unethical. Some are informative, but others are entertainment based, which makes them unethical. Therefore, some true crime media is unethical because the creators profit off victims'

True crime, mostly, is made to entertain their audience. If one were to go through all media made about true crime, one would see that 9 out of 10 times the story for the media is based on the killer instead of the victim. The Netflix show “Dahmer-Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” is one of many examples of how producers focus only on the killer. Dahmer has had many shows and movies made about him, and the families of Dahmer's victims have had to relive their trauma time and time again because of these producers who think that cases like these should be made into entertainment. The Dahmer show has had a lot of controversy surrounding it recently, “Relatives of Dahmer’s victims have been calling out the streaming service and the show’s producers for forcing them to relive the trauma of their losses without ever seeking their input.” (The Week Magazine 1). The families are not happy about it. Even watchers have thought the show was too disturbing. The way these shows are produced and advertised is unethical. Instead of making them bring awareness to the victims, they romanticize and fetishize the killers for

Fans of the genre are a big part of making it unethical. Many fans do not have any respect for these real-life cases, they treat them as something to dissect and solve themselves. This was seen by fans in a recent case, the murder of four college students. The murder occurred on November 13, 2022, in Idaho. Since it was broadcasted on the news many true crime fans took it upon themselves to dissect and try to solve this case. They were not ever respectful of the case and how real those murders were. They would grow angry when the police would not release information and would try to find a suspect in the crime and would involve anyone who was even just a bit tied to the victims. Fans also would pick apart the victims and their families' lives. In a CNN article writer, Rachel Monroe talks about this case and how true crime fans reacted to it, “ But the more time I spent reading about the case online, the more uneasy I grew. In their hunger for more details, some people seemed to forget that we were talking about a real tragedy that had happened to real people and not an episode of television.” ( Monroe 2). The way fans treated this case shows how many fans see true crime as entertainment which causes them to treat it as a fictional