A New Podcast Is Examining Why Were Obsessed With True Crime Podcasts

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A new podcast exploring the enormous popularity of true crime podcasts yielded surprising findings about why listeners predominantly women  are drawn to the often-fraught medium.

When two recent Stanford University graduates began to work on their aptly titled True Crime Podcast Podcast (the duplication is intentional), they expected to uncover a lot of really more sinister aspects of this media genre, co-producer Kyleigh McPeek told HuffPost. Instead, she and her co-producer and co-host, Grace Carroll, were surprised by how many people have found validation, empowerment, empathy, community and closure through true crime podcasts. 

Its a much more complicated conversation than we anticipated, McPeek said. Theres definitely some real problems with it, but also a lot of really positive benefits.

Over the 18 months they worked on the True Crime Podcast Podcast for a school honors project begun in their senior year at Stanford, McPeek and Carroll interviewed podcasters, researchers, journalists and attorneys, as well as some of the people who work behind the scenes to help podcasters turn their hobby into a profit-sustaining enterprise.

More than one-third of the 100 million Americans who listen to podcasts each week regularly listen to true crime, McPeek and Carroll said, and true crime podcasts make up an astounding 24% of the 6 million podcast titles currently available on Spotify .  

The vast majority of people who listen to true crime podcasts are women. According to media scholar Kelli Boling, who discusses gender dynamics in the podcasts second episode, women make up 73%  of the audience for true crime podcasts.

Among those women are domestic violence survivors, who Boling said have found a sense of community and validation where they feel seen after being silenced or victim-shamed and -blamed by law enforcement and the legal system.

The true crime story structure can be especially cathartic for these women, McPeek told HuffPost.

At the end of a true crime story, theres a resolution, theres a conclusion, theres closure, which often in their own cases, there isnt, just due to the nature of a lot of the legal issues around prosecuting domestic violence crimes, and a lot of the emotional things attached to that, McPeek said.

Still, entertainment is the primary reason women say they listen to true crime podcasts, according to Boling and other researchers. That doesnt have to mean voyeuristic murder porn, as McPeek and Carroll describe in the podcasts introduction.

Theres nothing inherently negative about something being entertainment, McPeek told HuffPost. Entertainment is what brings a lot of color to our lives.

An entertaining true crime podcast can still have the power to bring women closer together and highlight the injustices of the legal system, she added.

But I think where true crime runs into a lot of trouble is that it kind of dresses up as journalism in a lot of ways, and the way it conveys information that were getting is really different from just reported fact, McPeek said. 

Listeners often arent aware of the difference between podcasts that follow the principles of rigorous journalism and those that dont, McPeek and Carroll found. Also, taking the time to fact-check, interview sources and edit can hurt a podcasts chances of success.

It disadvantages you in the market for podcasts, because theres such a preference for speed and output, Carroll said, adding thats often at odds with the time and resources necessary to follow ethical journalistic standards. In fact, theres a bunch of economic incentives encouraging you to not. 

A hasty production and lack of guardrails can result in factual errors and serious lapses like accidentally implicating someone who has nothing to do with the crime, Carroll said. Meanwhile, lucrative podcasts rely on advertising, which demands that people keep listening for entire episodes and seasons.  To retain listeners, You need to parse out your information really slowly, and that leaves people a lot of time to draw conclusions or have, like, a lot of misleading information in the immediate moment, McPeek said.

In unsolved cases, podcasts speculation about a possible perpetrator what McPeek calls a huge trope of the genre can result in doxing private citizens and potentially taint a jury pool.

And its really hard for our legal system to start regulating that or protecting that in our very protected criminal jury system, McPeek said. 

On the other hand, McPeek noted that the criminal justice system has very limited resources, and podcasts huge platforms can help jump-start investigations and bring attention to cold cases. But that can be a double-edged sword for victims and family members, she said. 

[They] are put in this really tricky position where they need to get media attention on a case to persuade the police to follow up, McPeek said, but that publicity comes with all the really bad parts about getting media attention on the case. That includes, for example, the worldwide vilification of Amanda Knox and the harassment experienced by Sarah Turney , who became a public advocate for crime victims after she accused her father of killing her older sister. (He was acquitted of second-degree murder last year.) Both women are interviewed by McPeek and Carroll on their podcast.

After interviewing victims family members, like Turney and other really dedicated members of the true crime community, McPeek found that there are undeniably really positive parts of this media genre.

That makes it a really complicated kind of conversation to have about true crime podcasting, she said, adding, Theres definitely some real problems with it, but also a lot of really positive benefits.

After completing her research and editing it into podcast form, McPeek is left with two minds about the power of true crime podcasts: 

Part of the value of true crime is its really cathartic, and it adds a lot of closure to people who are victims of violent crime [and] brings them together in these true crime communities Maybe thats a really incredible power of this medium.

But the resolution in many true crime podcasts beginning, middle and end storytelling structure often does not reflect reality, she added.

[Or] maybe it misrepresents our criminal justice system and crime generally in our world, and is not the truth about crime, which is interesting, because we call the genre a true crime, McPeek said.

The six-part True Crime Podcast Podcast will air weekly, starting on Sept. 8.