Shows like:
Detroit 1-8-7 (as in MURDER).
Chicago Code (about a new, female police official who wants to clean up the city and ends up targeting a major public official for corruption -- an assassination is made against her life and a cop is killed, all in the first episode along with several other murders).
Harry's Law (about a law office -- in the last episode one of their lawyers sued fast food companies, making a heck of an argument to the judge about why the case should proceed during a hearing on a motion to dismiss the case, forcing the company to settle out of court).
Alaska Troopers (or something like that, about the "most rugged cops in the most rugged terrain").
Heck, even new shows about a pawn shop and "repo men" feature crime on a regular basis, as in every episode.
It makes your head spin trying to keep up with it all.
The point is, crime is literally everywhere in entertainment. And every bit of it is unrealistic and a major source of misconceptions about crime and criminal justice practice in the US.
As you have already stated, it is clear that these television shows create misconceptions to anyone who does not truly know about the law and how the system works. Another thing about these shows is that ALL of them show crimes that are violent in nature, leading viewers to believe that this kind of stuff may happen all the time (which any criminal justice major would know if utterly false). Of course, this is entertainment television and is not intended to be a reliable source, but in my opinion, most of the viewers do not realize this.
ReplyDeleteYeah true there are plenty of crime shows everywhere that breed misconceptions about law enforcement, but how many of us would watch any of these shows if they were even close to the real thing. Would you watch detroit 5-1-0 ( speeding)? No! So this cant be pinned just on the producers of the show. If we were to stop watching these shows or demand them to be more realistic, then perhaps they would change it, but really they are simply producing shows that make money, and that is our fault.
ReplyDeleteWhat would we do without our crime shows though?! They are great entertainment, until you have seen every episode and it all starts to blur together. When one of them comes on the TV now, I just change the channel because it seems like I have seen it before, even if it is a new episode. The entertainment media is a great resource to us. It distracts us from our daily lives. The negative side of the entertainment media is that the shows are portrayed in such a way that many people believe false ideals to be true. It may be the actors, the situations, the type of show, or even the title of the show that people fall prey to and succomb to the crime show false realities.
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