Student podcast examines true crime podcasts

In the early hours of November 13, 2022, a killer broke into a home in Moscow, Idaho and stabbed four college students to death as they slept in their beds. The brutal quadruple murder shocked the nation and the media. It also captivated true crime enthusiasts such as podcasters and TikTok detectives, who traveled to Moscow to analyze the case for their digital audiences.

“I started to wonder if the podcasters and social media influencers covering this crime were negatively influencing the police investigation,” said Kyleigh McPeek, 24. “I felt like there was a meta-story here about the true crime industry and how it influences the legal processes of the crimes they report on.”

At Stanford, McPeek and journalist Grace Carroll (class of '24) began studying the ethical, legal, and cultural implications of the true crime podcast industry for a senior project supported by Honors in Arts and the Bill Lane Center for the American West. Their findings are the subject of a new six-part podcast series called True crime podcastwhich premiered on September 8th.

True crimes?

True crime is a sprawling media genre popular with podcasters and social media influencers. When they cover real crimes, their followers often help search for clues or develop theories, creating an unofficial investigation. “When you bring this type of activity to these online platforms, the audience can easily participate in the investigation. There aren't the same barriers to entry as in traditional journalism,” McPeek said.

But such extensive and easily accessible media scrutiny can lead to misinformation or false accusations. For example, one popular TikTok user publicly claimed that a University of Idaho professor was involved in the Moscow murders, leading to a defamation lawsuit.

“Police would say the more eyes on a case the better because it helps them solve crimes,” McPeek said. “But it can also lead to police resources being diverted to people trying to disrupt the crime scene.”

Also, because true crime media content is typically created for entertainment purposes rather than to protect the public interest and public safety, courts may have difficulty assembling unbiased juries, thereby jeopardizing the constitutional right to a fair trial.

“You need jurors who have no information about a case before they get to the courtroom because you want their decision-making process to be based solely on the evidence presented in court,” McPeek said.

Stanford Detectives

McPeek and Carroll began studying the influence of the true crime media industry, particularly podcasts. But because the platform is relatively new, there is little scholarship on the topic. So, during their senior year, they spoke to dozens of sources, including media and legal scholars, journalists, a neuroscientist, and true crime podcasters. They spoke to relatives of victims, including Sarah Turney, whose true crime podcast about her sister's unsolved murder prompted police to reopen the case. Turney has since emphasized how valuable digital media is to such investigations.

The pair also interviewed sources who became the subject of major media scandals after being implicated in a real crime, including Amanda Knox, the American woman who was wrongly convicted of the murder of her roommate in the 2000s and served four years in an Italian prison. Knox was later acquitted of the charges.

“She's now a podcaster who talks about true crime-related topics, and she's been very generous in sharing her experiences with this type of media,” McPeek said.

Carroll and McPeek had a wide selection of recorded interviews and decided that a podcast would be the best platform to share their findings. “We had the rare opportunity that the ultimate medium for our research is the same medium we are researching,” Carroll said. “That was one of the most fun aspects of this project.”

The True crime podcast uses a variety of narrative formats, from journalistic serial narrative styles to more casual and conversational. It also explores the tropes and subliminal production methods that true crime podcasters use, such as sound effects, music or a host's voice presentation. “We had the idea of ​​playing with that meta aspect by presenting some of our research in a very subliminal way through the production and formatting of our own podcast episodes, which is really exciting creatively,” Carroll said.

Although the podcast does indeed cover real crimes, McPeek explained that they are not the focus of every episode. “It's true crimes Podcast These are the crimes that every story is about,” she said.

Carroll and McPeek spent over a year on the project, researching, writing, editing and producing the entire series and recording all six episodes in a Stanford studio.

The verdict

True crime podcasts often blur the lines between journalism and entertainment. Carroll and McPeek said they followed journalistic codes of ethics in researching, interviewing and producing their podcast.

“But the end product is entertainment,” Carroll said. “We wanted it to be fun for people to listen to. And we wanted it to be engaging, emotional, scary and all the things that make true crime podcasts great.”

McPeek noted that the project was also different from the quantitative research she conducted at Stanford. “Examining how true crime media interacts with the world culturally, economically and legally, and how media constructs our ideas of truth and justice is a very qualitative assessment,” she said.

So how do Carroll and McPeek define the true crime media industry's influence on the world? And do they believe it does more harm than good?

“That's our big reveal and the verdict that awaits us at the end of episode six,” Carroll said.