The History of True Crime Journalism with Dr. Bethany Usher

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Dr. Bethany Usher's website for books, research, and events - Author / Journalist / Academic / Educator – Author, Journalist, Academic


In this episode of the Cult Vault Podcast, host Kacey speaks with Dr. Bethany Usher, a Doctor of Journalism from Newcastle University, about the evolution of crime journalism, the ethics surrounding true crime content, and the historical context of media representation. They discuss the sensational nature of crime media, the importance of ethical practices in podcasting, and the launch of the Ethics Project aimed at creating a new code of conduct for true crime creators. The conversation also touches on the North East True Crime Forum and the need for education in journalism to adapt to contemporary issues.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Nominated is one of the best British true crime podcasts.
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(00:25):
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Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hello and welcome to the Cult Vault podcast, your dedicated
podcast for uncovering the darkest corners of cults and coercive control.
I'm your host, Casey, and I want to start by
thanking each and every one of you for tuning in.
Your support fuels our deep dives into these critical issues.
Before we get started, a word of caution. Today's episode

(00:52):
may contain discussions on abuse, including graphic descriptions of abuse,
and covers a variety of human rights violations that may
be triggering for some listeners. Please consider this as a
trigger warning and proceed with caution. I'm thrilled to announce
that I'll be appearing at Crime Con UK in London
on the seventh and eighth of June twenty twenty five

(01:12):
and again in Manchester on the twenty seventh of September
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(01:33):
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Speaker 3 (01:42):
Weekend of the year. I hope to see some of
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Speaker 2 (01:46):
More from the Court Fault Podcast, you can access early
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of this work. Thank you again for your support and
your listenership. Now let's unlock the vault. Hello, Hello, Hello listeners,

(02:10):
and welcome back to another episode of the Corporal Podcast.
Today we are back to our normal format after a
couple of strange weeks of being at crome Con and
then doing a deep dive into the celebrity world at

(02:30):
the moment of problematic male figures in the entertainment industry.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
And so today I'm joined by a.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
New guest who is going to talk to us about
something that I harp on about all the time, but
not very eloquently. So I'll leave that to Dr Bethany
Usher to talk about a in a more academic way.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Hello, Welcome to the.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Show, Bethany, Hi, thanks for having me. So I usually
start these conversations by asking the guests to introduce themselves
to the listeners.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Okay, So I'm Bethany Yusha. I'm a doctor of Journalism.
I work at Newcastle University up in the northeast of England,
and I used to be a crime reporter, but then
I became an academic and I study the history and
the ethics of crime, journalism and true crime. At the moment,
I study other aspects of journalism and ethics of media too,

(03:23):
But at the moment I'm leading a project at Newcastle
University which is about rethinking the ethics of true crime
content across many different forms, including things like this the podcast.
So I'm really excited to talk to you today.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
I was just saying before we hit the record button
that I watched a one hour lecture of you talking
at Aberystwyth University and it was fascinating. You were talking
all about the history of journalism but also the way
that journalism morphed into this sort of sensational storytelling, salacious

(04:06):
type of headline grabbing true crime frenzy basically. And I
don't know if there's a way. It was a speedy
one hour lecture and I am so surprised that you
managed to get in as much as you did, But
I don't know if there's a way that you can
sum up for the listeners. So how that process came
about and how it's impacted us today.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
And yeah, So I think the most important thing to
understand is that crime is actually media's longest sistinge genre
in print. It's been around about half a millennium, begun
in Tudor, England, and there was three parts of that
that became kind of the like founding discourses and of
shit crime news and crime media and crime true crime

(04:50):
content ever since. So the first was around rugues and scoundrels,
so kind of dandy highwaymen to kind of street gangs
of petty crimen. And from this you got the first
kind of journalistic news gatherers who would expose them kind
of they were called corney catchers, and they were doing

(05:10):
sting operations, so they would kind of set up these
criminals street criminals and kind of expose them to the
public and give the public tips to stop becoming victims
of them. And then you got the Highwaymen, which were
very linked to the Civil War, and they were political

(05:31):
figures really, but they became very celebrity figures. And the
kind of idea of notoriety really is an all development
of fame than celebrity culture. And you had witch pamphlets,
particularly about witchcraft trials or witches around the country and
witch hunting, and you had pamphlets about murder, so bloody

(05:53):
murder it was called then a murtha m u R
t h R was the spelling at the time, became
you know, a really fascinating gentleman. And we've got about
one hundred and eighty six I think it is that
might be a bit wrong, as surviving murder pamphlets from
kind of the early moding period, and you will see

(06:15):
things that would be very familiar in terms of language
to audiences of true crime today, so they will say
things like a true or exact relation. So there you
get the true element of true crime five hundred years ago,
that link to the word through you'll see things like horrific, barbarous, bloody,

(06:35):
these terminology, these sensational terminology. So when people kind of
hit out at true crime fans or true crime creators
about them being sensational, I always say, well, that's hitting
out at something's nature. You can't help the fact that
crime media is, by nature, by creation, sensational. My argument

(06:58):
is is just because it's senseational does not mean that
it also can't be a force for public good, and
that we can turn this genre, we can use it
as a means to fight better fights. And there is
lots of true crime creators and journalists across this history
who've done just that, from bringing in the firstage of
consent laws from girls, to leniency for women who've miscarried

(07:25):
and where they might have been increased of murder at
one point, to a whole host of different things that
we are the end of capital punishment. These were all
things that were done by creators or journalists or whatever
they were called during their time of this genre.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
So much to unpack in what you've just talked about
in terms of kind of comparing that time in history
to where we are today. So you said that true
crime is media's longest standing genre, and I think that's
kind of true of podcasts as well. Podcasts, by by

(08:06):
far the most listened to genre of podcasts is true crime.
And you can, you know, it's like this podcast is
a drop in a bucket, you know, of all the
different types of true crime podcasts there are out there,
and today's equivalent of watching true crime documentaries on TV.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
I suppose would have been actually.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Attending trials and hangings and and all sorts of bloody
things back in the.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Day where people would buy tickets and get popcorn or
whatever the equivalent of popcorn was back then.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Absolutely. I think there's two kinds of things to unpick
on that. So the first is that podcasts and documentaries
often retell all the crime stories in new ways, and
that can be for good reason. So you can have
what I call in my work ethical remediatizations, where the
story is being told in a way that is also

(09:04):
a new line that is in the public interest. So,
for example, when you're watching things on Netflix and they
might uncover misdemeanors in the investigation or buy the medium,
or you know, our mistakes that were made and they
will tell or they made four front victims in a
way that fifty years ago when the case happened, the

(09:25):
victims were not considered as matter. They're ethical remediatizations, and
so when you're listening to podcasts or listening to or
watching documentaries, you can spot those, and I talk about it.
You can see more on my website beth Nioshia dot com,
where it tells you what to look for if you're
looking for something ethical. There's also commercial retalentes where people

(09:45):
are just telling the story in ever more sensational detail,
often just to make money. That hasn't got a new
public interest line. It doesn't have a real purpose. And
what people have to understand to think about this genre
is those two things have been around from the very beginning.
So five hundred years ago, you would have murders told
the same story, covered over and over and over again,

(10:07):
sometimes for radical purposes, sometimes with added sensational details, maybe
made up even just to sell more pamphlets. So we're
talking about pre newspapers in the pamphlet period, So I
think that you've got this. That was one part of
the of the genre you're talking about, which is similar

(10:28):
to podcasts and documentaries. The other element was the participatory
culture of it, so, particularly in London in capital cities,
where you had the scenes where events happened. So the
Old Bailey you could go to and watch. People would
want to watch trials themselves, and the words of the

(10:50):
criminals would be reported by what were then called grubs,
writers that were writing around London's Grub Street, which was
the first kind of area of popular culture of this
kind of prink culture, would go and they would report
on what was said. The second was Newgate Jail because
you could pay to go in and talk to criminals

(11:10):
in their cells. It was kind of like an entertainment,
but also grubs would go in to pay them to
interview them, to create their pamphlets and write about it.
And then of course Tyburn Hill which was the site
of hanging in London, and you had these events, really
these almost carnivalesque spectacles of people being taken from the

(11:31):
Old Bailey to Newgate Jail and then from Newgate Jail
along the streets to the gallows of Tyburn and people
would turn out and cheer, then they would give them alcohol.
It was like a festivity on the thing, and then
they would give their final speech. And often at the
same time as their final speech was being given, people
were selling copies about their final speech because they'd already

(11:53):
got them out of that knew what we're saying at
Newgate Jail. So you would have people selling them, and
then you would have the crowd, and the rich would
pay to watch it in kind of grandstands set up
with with refreshments, and the poor would be, you know,
a kind of straight level watching it. And and yeah,
I mean this is depicted most famously in hogarths painting

(12:18):
of the Young Apprentice at the Gallows, which is worth
going and having a look at, which really kind of
maps out elements of the scene that we've just said.
So yeah, I mean, a fascinating spectacle. But people have
always had this participatory desire almost and I think what
you see that most now is in things like the

(12:39):
armchair detectives on TikTok. And we could talk endlessly about
some of the recent incidents where that's got out of hand.
Because people have this desire to participate. You know, the
family of Nikola Bully have talked about it, for example,
where people want to participate in this event in somewhere,
make themselves part of it, so they start posting on TikTok,

(13:00):
they start investigating it in their own way. You know,
there's an ethical I would say.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Enough that is really interesting to consider when you think
about trial by media because when you were talking about
these pamphlets and the way that some of these criminals
would be talked about, even if they were like just.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
A person of interest or you know, they were a.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Suspected a crime, some of the ways that these pamphlets
were talking about, you know, these people that were actually
not charged yet or not found guilty yet. It was
almost trial by media as we know it today with
social media and digital platforms. But way back when with
just a paper and a pencil, Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
Mean definitely there was elements of that. And you know,
but it's really interesting because you've got when journalism starts
to be professionalized with the vaults of newspapers in the
eighteenth century and then through a nineteenth century, you start
getting more rules about what you can and can't say,
you know, gradually over the space of one hundred and
fifty years. But journalists today have to stick by content

(14:07):
of court rules, for example, so you can't say somebody
is guilty. And at the moment there is lots of
people who are doing that on social media, and I
think that, you know, we're going to have some There
were some test cases. I don't want to go into
too much detail because there were victims of sexual crimes
with people naming victims, which is of course illegal in
this country. But there, you know, there have been some

(14:30):
incidences of prosecution of people for what they've posted on
social media. But I think we need a whole spit
more of them actually, so people understand that you can't
accuse somebody of being completely guilty of a crime once
they've been invested, because in this country proceedings are active,
and that's contempt of code risks justice for victims at

(14:51):
the core. That's what it's about. It's about protecting just
victims and justice. But yes, I mean, you know, in
in the early modern period and you know, the eighteenth century,
in the boom of print media and modernity as we were,
the beginnings of what we would understand is today. Absolutely,
you know, it was everything anything, could go, and there

(15:12):
was some fascinating cases of tried bimedia and also campaigns
for people's convictions to be quashed. To from that period
that I talk about my book Journalism and Crime, which yes,
you brought us to the kind of media we had today.
You know, things were created. You know, it was created
over such a long period of time.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
So your book, I believe it was published in twenty
twenty three, Journalism and Crime. Yeah, ender twenty beginning of
twenty twenty four, depending on where you get it. Rom
It says it differently, but it was finished in late
twenty twenty three. And there's another book called Journalism and Celebrity.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Whereas that's my first book. And Journalisman and Celebrity begins
in so Johnasman. Crime begins in Tudor, England with the
first crime pamphlets that I discussed, and you know, was
a lot of time spent in the archives of the
British Library hunting out the earliest references to things like
when was true created as linked to this, and so

(16:33):
you can kind of see the birthplaces of some of
the things we find familiar. And then Journalism and Celebrity
begins with the emergence of celebrity culture in the eighteenth century,
So we have to understand celebrity culture and journalism itself
actually as we would recognize it today is really in
eighteenth century. Inventional the elements existed earlier than that, with

(16:55):
the print boom of the eighteenth century and the emergence
of consumer capitalism and democracy. So celebrity culture and journalism
are like the media representations of consumer capitalism and democracy.
And what I talk about in that book is how
there's fore intertwined. You know, you can't have democracy and

(17:18):
capitalism depend on one another and depend on celebrity culture
and journalism. So yeah, I never intended to be a historian.
When I left newspapers and decided that I wanted to
kind of do a PhD and think about why news
was the way it is, I just kind of started
scrolling back, scrolling back, and you know, find myself ever

(17:39):
earlier in the archives of the British Library, which I
actually I absolutely love. It's a brilliant place to be
and to spend a day working.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
It's really fascinating to listen to you talk about all
of this stuff, but just to see how interesting you
find it as well, because sometimes when I start going
on and on about cults and course of control. People
were like, wow, that sounds interesting.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
I'm like, I think so everybody, but it is for me.
So when you.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
When you started looking into the kind of history of journalism,
I suppose nobody had asked that question, where did it
all come from? So you've answered that question now by
going back through all of the stuff, earlier stuff available
to look through.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Well, there was actually there's loads of journalism history books,
but they tend to focus on the politics. So the
place of journalism in democracy and this idea of like
journalists unique place in the sun as the watchdogs of
democracy and that we wouldn't have democracy. And often there
are better there are more nuanced studies, but the original

(18:48):
histories of the press were these real glory sort of
glory tales of like the political fight. And then there
was there was a growing you know, social histories that
looked at at more journalism more is a system of
social control and the place of it and propping up
the state and propping up governance. But you know that

(19:10):
there wasn't the same focus on journalism's relationship with popular culture.
I would say celebrity and crime and what I what
I argue was actually the fight for democracy, certain the
fight for rights, legal rights, the relationship between law and order.
You have to understand the relationship between celebrity culture and

(19:31):
crime cultures too. So yes, there's lots of much older
and more. You know, histories of the press, they go
back to the nineteen twenty is actually some of the
seminal seminal work, and there's a brilliant historian called James
Karen who works at Goldsmith's University who's written you know,
a number of fantastic books on this subject. But my

(19:54):
slant is different in that I focus more on the
bottom up popular culture who often working class, the stories
of ordinary people and how that way of journalism grew.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
So you're like a historian, journalist, author, lecturer at new
Castle University or a woman that's wearing very different hats.
So do they all come together at times or do
you find yourself often having to work like doctor Bethany Usher.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
As the author or as the lecturer. I think more
than ever it's come together now. I think that you know,
when you leave newspapers As a young journalist, I'd always
wanted to be a journalist and I'm quite honest about
the fact that when I got to national newspapers, I
was uncomfortable with things that I was asked to do

(20:46):
with didn't square with my ethics, and it was a
really difficult situation to be in in kind of my
sort of late twenties, mid to late twenties, having thought
so hard to get there, you know, from a work
more group in the Council of State in Sunderland, work
for my local newspaper, managed to get a national thought
that I'd kind of made it to go. Actually, I'm

(21:09):
unhappy here, and I want to do something different. But
I love journalism. I love the history of journalism. I
love that at its best it has changed the world,
you know, and it makes it's fought for the rights
of people like my family, you know, ordinary working class people,
and that I love. But for a while, I think

(21:30):
I was kind of like nervous about talking about my
hit working newsper nervous about different things. And as I've
got a little bit older, finish the book, spend more
time reflecting, you know, the change of becoming a mother,
I think kind of like helps you. It's an interesting word.
I had one for another day, but that kind of
changes your perspective on things as well, that I'm finding

(21:54):
that I'm much happiers to be who I am and
to talk about all of my interests as a whole.
And I think that launching the Ethics Project to try
and we've come up with a new code of conduct
for creators, and we were both at Crime kind of
a couple of weeks ago, and I was there talking
to create spread and loads of them are interested in

(22:15):
signing up to the code of conduct. We've got journalists
who signed up already, where we were about to kind
of in the next sort of four months do the
full public launch and see who we've got involved as
the kind of first trench through it. That really makes
me feel like I'm using my experience as an industry
and my work towards a good and that was why

(22:36):
I wanted to be a journalist in the first place too.
So at the moment, I'm feeling that all of these
things have come together. But ask me that question again
in months time, I might give you a different answer.
I love, I love hearing all of this.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
I wonder if being kind of mid to late twenties
and being a woman working in what I assume and
correct me if this is wrong, was still largely a
male dominated industry, very patriarchal in its history, which you
would know more than most people through the work that

(23:13):
you've done. Do you feel like if you would have
landed that job in your early twenties or late teens,
that you would have found kind of the bravery or
the strength to actually voice your concerns or that you
didn't feel comfortable with any of this stuff, Because I

(23:35):
remember being in uncomfortable work positions at that age and thinking,
I want to say something here, but I don't want
to lose my job, but I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Be treated differently at work.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
And I'd seen that happen to other people, and with journalism,
it's always portrayed a so cutthroat in other journalistic pieces
or media pieces.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
That we might consume.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
So I just wonder, as a woman working in that
who wasn't comfortable with those things, did you have to
go through those processes before saying, actually, I'm going to
do it differently.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
So I was a very young reporter, so I started
working at my local newspaper and my first song works experience,
and then on shifts in my late teens early twenties,
and then I was crime reporter for my local newspaper
by the time I think I was twenty three. And
I have to say that my experiences in the regions

(24:29):
were rooms and I had the best training ground. I
worked with some fantastic journalists. My mentor, who I dedicated
my book to, Patlavel, who sadly passed away, was an
incredible crime journalist, and it was really a crime reporter
that I wanted to be, and I talked about in
the book that the reason I wanted to be a
crime reporter specifically was in my teenager as I was

(24:52):
a victim of strange violence, of a violent crime which
resulted in the long term medical care. I was in
the hospital for for a long time and still have
injuries and ongoing injuries. And the prosecution of my attackers,
although it took two years to fight for justice, during
which time the charges were lowered because they were juveniles too.

(25:14):
And I think that at the end of that I
was thirteen when that happened, and so fifteen sixteen by
the time that we were finished with the court case.
I begain. I had this burning desire to give voice
to victims. That was what I was going to do
with my life, and so I wanted to go as
a crime reporter. And there's a whole body of scholarship

(25:36):
that talks about true crime fans and how many of
them have been victims or survivors, have known somebody who's
been a victim of violence in some way, and there's
this idea, there's this scholarship that says, it's like that's
interviewed fans and they talk about, therefore, by the grace
of God goai that they watched the most extreme versions
of what could have happened to them to help them

(25:57):
make sense and to put their own experiences in the perspective.
And I would say that I didn't understand that as
a teenager, certainly not, but with hindsight I can definitely
say that that was part of my experience. So I
was involved with a couple of very high profile cases
at the Sunderland Deco. We side Jack, which was the

(26:18):
hoaxer for the Yorkshire Ripper tapes that he was found
finally on my patch while I was crime reporter and
my news editor, who I mentioned, Pat Level, had written
a lot of books and had you know, kept writing
to West Yorkshire Police to DNA test the letters, so
we had a bit of a head start on network.

(26:39):
And then a case of a man called Rothhoor who
won the lottery while he was on remand for it
people was the sior Ra. He spent sixteen years was
also found in Sunderland within a short period of time,
and because of that I got the attention of the
nationals and I went off to London and I would
say that I found it overwhelming, I became ill. I

(27:03):
was I yes it was crime reporting was a very
male dominated field, but it was at the height I
think of a lot of unethical practices and also that
the ask was for me to turn my skills as
a crime reporter on the celebrities. And I would say
freely that I did things during that time that I

(27:24):
am that I wish I had not done. But I
also made the decision, which was very difficult at the time,
to go this, I can't do this decision for me
and walk away. It's a real it still quite can
be quite a difficult period of my life. That kind
of from thirteen about those fifteen years of my life

(27:44):
and the level of kind of uphaval of being the
victim of crime, having PTSD, putting myself in this situation
where crime was part of my day to day life,
the retraumatization of that, and then in a really toxic
environment of work, and you know, I ended up hospitalized.
I'm not ashamed to talk about that. I was really

(28:06):
really ill by the end of those experiences. But the
books became my way of making sense of that. And
I'm thrilled to have fine a place it, you know,
where I work at the moment where you know, those
kind of things, those kind of experiences as seen as
the strength of what I do, rather than as a

(28:27):
weakness or as a vulnerability. You know, in that way,
in your castle is a great place to work.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Out of all of this is the Ethics Project being born.
So for for anybody that hasn't heard of this so far,
you know, people that maybe couldn't make crime con even
it was a great weekend. I will be back again
in September in Manchester.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Would you be able to talk us.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Through what the Ethics Project is? And is this on
Bethany usher dot com as well?

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yeah, it's and it's actually on the Newcastle University have
recently done a really good piece on it and on
the blog which is called from our from blog, so
it's from Newcastle to the world, but I kind of
try and exploin it to people, but they did a
great piece on it a few weeks ago. So the
idea is that we have been working with journalists, academics,

(29:24):
victims of crime creators to come up with a code
of conduct that it's fit for the twentieth first century
of what I call in my book journalistic crime content,
so true crime content, podcasting, documentaries in the broader sense,
and news in the broader sense. And it's based on
some of it is from little law, some of it

(29:46):
is from existing codes of practice, and some of it
is around things and my representation and how we treat
victims that would be news. So, for example, one of
the things that we talk about is anonymity for stalking
victims and victims of domestic violence. There is no legal

(30:07):
duty in this country to give anonymity to stalking victims.
I think that is a massive oversight, and we've worked
with victims who have raised this with us because actually
it gives their stalker more information about the men can
actually refuel it if the court case is covered like
it gives them what they want almost and that if

(30:27):
you've been stalked and then you find your information splashed
everywhere without your consent, then that can be retraumatizing. So
that would be an example of something that would be
beyond what exists normally. We also talk about issues of
representation about including when that we shouldn't include family members

(30:50):
of criminals and stories unless they are directly linked to
the crime and the court case. Then we shouldn't be
you know, naming and shaming extended family, which is something
that we do. So a range of different things that
we've been working on. So I had a first draft
at the end of my book as a conclusion to
my book. I'm now onto draft three that has been

(31:12):
done with journalists and creators and academics. The last draft
will be with the podcast community and the documentary community.
So I'll be doing a series of workshops over the
next three months. I hope you'll attend one. I'll be
getting other people to give them input, and then we're
asking people to sign up. And what people will do
is submit some sample content and if they passed, they

(31:36):
would get a Kite mark, which indicates to audiences that
their work is ethical. And then we're going to be
promoting that a load of audience events and true crime
events to put all that to audiences so that they
can spot what is ethically produced and what isn't.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
That was so exciting. I've found the link here in
the from blog. I'll put a link to Bethany's website
and to this blog post in the episode description.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
But that kind of segues us nicely into.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Me saying join us at the Northeast to True Crime
Forum twenty twenty five for an immersive, one of a
kind experience. Participate in thought provoking workshops, gain practical self
defense skills, and here from a diverse range of speakers,
and meet local podcasters. Set in an iconic historic venue,

(32:33):
this forum offers a rare opportunity to delve deep into
the world of true crime from multiple perspectives. The Northeast
True Crime Forum.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
Yes, so that's coming up next part. Then we'll bite
be there. That's really exciting. It's excited, And I've got
to give a shout out to our friend Jacoah, who
is they all denied that but is not very well
and can't join us today. Hijaca, I hope you feel better. So, yeah,
this is really exciting. So Jakhrn's a clubor true crime

(33:04):
phone club in Newcastle where they get together and they
came to one of my workshops and the club and
after that I went to talk to other members too
on the ethics of true crime. I did a workshop
and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council's Festival
of Social Sciences, which was giving workshops to audiences around

(33:28):
different types of ethical research. And so she asked me
to become an advisor on the first event of its
kind in the Northeast. So we're bringing a kind of
true crime audiences event to the Northeast and to make
sure that it was ethical, that we were doing things
that were workshop based that could educate people in some

(33:48):
way you know that we don't want. You know, true
crime fans and creators often get lambastard for it being sensational.
And as we said earlier, there is no point mambusting
something that is sensational by nature, by creation. What we
need to do is to find ways of using it
towards good and to do use it in an ethical way.

(34:10):
And I'm really proud to be an advisor on this
event and to work with Jaco Word to make sure
that content that has reached an audience as an event
sore ethical in this way.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
I'm so excited for this event, and I think the
lineup is so diverse but really interesting.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
I'll just read some of the.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Titles out of some of the sessions that are available,
and this is on the twelfth of July twenty twenty
five in Newcastle, pont And I'll put a link to
this event in the.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Episode description as well.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Crisis Pregnancies and the criminal Criminalization of abortion, the ethics
of true crime, and social media and journalism. Sounds like that.
One must be Dr Bethy Usher's. There's a self defense class,
there's Holly's Hope, so Holly's story and recognizing signs of

(35:26):
domestic abuse. There is going to be get Mortal Party.
This workshop aims to endaboos and gently challenge both public
and hidden narratives of death, dying, and grief. There's also
going to be a talk on cults and course of control. Oh,
that sounds like that one must be by me, So

(35:49):
I'll be there giving a talk about the ties between
cults and course of control and course of control beyond
domestic violence, domestic abuse and cults. So that's going to
be a really interesting interactive ninety minute workshop. It will

(36:11):
be the first time that I've done something like that
in person since my older UNI days back back in
like twenty thirteen forteen.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
So I'm really looking forward to that, spending time with other.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Content creators, other people that facilitate workshops, other people that
are involved in research and academics, and obviously spending another.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Day with doctor Bethany Usher as well. I even prow
to it and be good to show you around Newcastle,
bring you up from the Northwest and show you you
know thing. I Ope it's weather like we have at
the moment for it, because then it'll be glorious.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
Yes, earlier when I emailed you, I was like, oh,
the first Northwest true crime event.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
You're like, Casey, it's the Northeast, and I was like, oh,
so sorry.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
I'm so used to saying oh, I'm based in the Northwest,
or you know, this is coming up to the Northwest,
but absolutely it's the Northeast.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
I'm going to be driving across to the other side.
And I'm really looking forward.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
To visiting Newcastle for the first time.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
It will be for me and.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Just meeting Jacoah and seeing the success of this event
in progress as well.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
I love the story of the True Crime Forum.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
I'm probably going to mess it up when I say this,
but I remember meeting with Jacoah for the first time,
and she made it sound almost like it was a
weekly pub quiz type of setup, where you know, a
group of people would get together to do a pub quiz,
but instead of doing a pub quiz, they would talk
about cold cases or unsolved cases or things related.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
To true crime.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
And that grew slowly and has become so successful now
that there's a whole event being dedicated to the True
Crime Forum. I don't know if you've heard it differently better,
and I'm just messing out.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
So what would has talked about is like how during COVID,
like she was really fin this sense of loneliness and
coming out of COVID, and she was looking for a
kind of a sense of community, and so they started
doing these events and it's once every two weeks, I
think that they meet up and they watch a range
of documentaries and discuss their series on it, and it's

(38:23):
become a real community. I've been to talk to the group.
I think there's now eight hundred members, and not every
member comes every two weeks. I think that normally they
have about between fifty you know, thirty and fifty every
two weeks. It's the kind of you'll have people who
come once every six months, you have people who come
you know, I'll never miss it, but that she's really

(38:45):
built this real community in Newcastle. And what I think
is really commendable about Jaco's work was that you know,
she could have she could have seen this as a
commercial entity very quickly. I think there was a lot
of people who would have spotted this as a way
of making money, but Jakoa went a completely different way,
which was to seek how people who were passionate about
the ethics and that's how we met. And she wanted

(39:08):
this to be something that was ethically done for fronted
victims and that when she was said, you know, an
event that isn't about being salacious, it's about actually trying
to do some good from it and to educate people
and to bring people together, victims with creators in a
way that you know, we're all coming out of it

(39:30):
feeling like it's been a positive day. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Absolutely, And then to round the event off with a
nice little.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Round table dinner.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
I think like a like a Viking type of dinner
is what I'm imagine. A banquet of sorts.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
Some blackfriars, which is a really I think it's it
might be sixteenth century, it's certainly seventeenth century. It's I
think an old monastery or something which has become a
restaurant's fantastic and has a banquet hole and function room
and stuff like that. So I'm sure they will spoil
us with a lovely male at the end. If I've

(40:09):
ever been to a banquet hall, it's only a little one.
It's not it's not you know, it's not huge.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
At the event, I'll be like, and here's me in
the banquet hall, and that'll be my picture of the weekend.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
First time visiting a banquet hall. Well, I'm really looking.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Forward to this event, and I'm appreciative of Jacoa approaching
me and asking me if i'd be interested in being involved.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
And I am looking forward to.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Meeting hopefully some of the listeners at the event and
then having a like a decompression session afterwards where we
discuss some of the major revelations of the workshop and
things that I was able to go and experience from
other people's workshops.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
As well.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
So for those people that can't make it, I will
definitely give you a rundown of the day, and hopefully
this will be the first of many.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
And I'll again.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Put the link in the episode description for anyone interested
in booking tickets.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
So tell me then, Dr Bethley Usher.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
The only reason I say your full title is because
that's how Dracoha talks about you as well, she says,
Dr Bethley Usher.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
Yeah, a deathinite. It's fine.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, she always says the three parts. So do you
have many plans in the future to write a third book?
Are you already working on that or is that just
something on the backburner maybe?

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Yeah, And I'm just putting together more so. My books
are obviously academic texts or historical, but I am putting
together at the moment and sort of general audience history
book and on the history of true crime, which I
hope to get out finished in the next six months

(42:09):
to a year. We will see. I'm Jakor and I
are working on a podcast project that we're hoping to
bring later in the year, and we're you know, I'm
I'm thinking about, you know, arrange different things. I'm one
of those people who often likes to have a lot
of fingers and a lot of pies. We've got a
lot of fantastic educational work going on at Newcastle at

(42:30):
the moment too, because we're launching a new sort of
educational strategy for twenty thirty and beyond. So I've got
a lot of work going on internally on that. So yes,
I'm busy, busy, but yes, I think I'll probably. My
husband keeps saying to me, like, oh, how long are
you going to stick with the kind of crime element?
What's going to be the next thing? And I think

(42:52):
that I'll stick with this. You know, I really am
really passionate about the project it's going to take. I'm
still applying for funding to keep things like to launch
the website, to make sure that we've got the time
to you know, to put the analyze people's content, to
give them the Kite mark, to develop the Kite mark.
You know, I'm applying for pots of money all over

(43:13):
the place to try and do that. But I just
think it's really important mark. And I think particularly what
I say to creators is that if you don't do
something voluntary, So the press did it voluntarily. That's why
we have the exole Code of Conduct, which is self regulated,
whereas offcom is government led and is much, you know,
much kind of truffer in some ways, and we'll be

(43:35):
really really problematic for a lot of podcasters and creators. Actually,
so when I talk to people like you about the projectors,
say to them, you know that if we can get
a self regulation off the brand people sign up to it,
then that is much more likely to cover sway and
to ensure that you can keep doing your good work
in the future. Actually, so finding the way to fund

(44:00):
I think next, so that it has some longevity, so
that it's not just you know, me for the next
twenty five years deciding whether somebody is it's something's ethical.
It does have a committee, but that that's probably if
fund and moving forward is a big, big bit of work.
At the moment, it's hard.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
To weigh up the pros and cons of podcasting being
mostly unregulated.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
I think.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
It's like cool for independent content creators in that sense
that you have that flexibility and freedom.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
You're you're not you know, you're not.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Constrained by the same rules and regulations that journalists maybe
you know, the newspapers might be that TV shows might be, but.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
At the same time, you have very, very dodgy.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Individuals that can have a platform reaching anyone in the
world and they can say anything on that platform to
anyone that listens, which is scary.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
And even I mean, one of the things I argue
is that, so it's a nonsense now to keep dividing
and regulation by platform, having one for printing, one for
broad customer. It's just not the reality of the digital world.
But also we need to start thinking cross borders too,
because you know, for example, the laws in America around

(45:30):
reporting are completely different to the laws in the UK.
So I'm really, you know, for example, concerned about some
of the big trials we might have coming up where
in America it would be legal to name victims, but

(45:50):
the court cases in the UK and it's illegal in
the UK to name victims. That I think we're going
to we're going into some really interesting territory across this
genre and worrying territory for me, So things like the
Code of Conduct and you know, my attempting. You know,
I'm an eternal optimist. Maybe it'll make a difference to

(46:13):
some people, maybe it won't, you know, ever do it,
But I do think that it's a wild West out there.
The overuse of rumor and conjecture in this field is awful.
It has devastating impacts on victims in their families, and
something needs to be done quickly now because things are

(46:34):
starting to come to a head and you're seeing more
and more cases where you know that the impacts on
people are just horrific. Of wild West, of speculation room
and just making money out of stories. It's just awful.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, yeah, especially in this age of conspiratorial thinking. And yeah,
I'm just thinking specifically about Alex Jones and Sandy Hook,
you know, and how eventually that type of reporting. I

(47:09):
don't know, I don't know if that's the right word
to use, but I argue that just in this case,
that type of reporting did land him in trouble, in
criminal trouble, But how much damage had.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
Been done before.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Before he was picked up by law enforcement and charged,
because you know, there were so many family members who
were impacted by the events of Sandy Hook.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
I might be wrong, but I thought that was a
civil case. But well, you know, I don't know, it
wasn't a league, it wasn't a criminal case. I think
it was a defamation case. You might be right on that.
I can't remember off the top of my head.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
But no, you probably you'd you would know more than
I would.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
The UK, there has been he's the so there has
been people who have been suiture defamation podcasters in criminal
by since one hundred percent and have paid out before
it's become public knowledge. I know that for a fact.
I've spoken to creates and to victims who have been
involved in the UK, and often it is an agreement

(48:15):
behind closed doors. Well I can't reveal you know, the
instances or the podcast or creators involved, but that I
know has happened. I think it's a matter only a
matter of time before someone's criminals prosecuted in the UK
from contempt of court, because there will be a case
that will be so public demand that will end up

(48:39):
could end up with justice being denied. And there was
a really big case of this involving newspapers in the
nineteen nineties and a footballer who was involved in an assault.
I'm not going to go into it, was allegedly involved
in an assault. I wanted to say, I'm not going
to go into it because I don't want to make
you have to legal check everything that comes into my mind,

(49:00):
so I'm not going to name the specific but essentially
a trial collapsed because journalists had been involved in the
payment of witnesses, there was information that was subdued that
was released, and I just it's kind of one of
those that has disappeared into the arnals of history. But

(49:20):
I think we we need to be really careful because
if a trial collapses because of content that is being
put out on any platform, then those people, in my opinion,
could first prosecution. And journalists have gone to jail for contempt,
have call over the years many times in the history
of journalism. And just because people are on social media

(49:42):
and claiming not to be journalists and that kind of thing,
doesn't mean they're not having to stick by the same.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Rules, right right, Yeah, Yeah, I think that's the big difference,
isn't it. You know, somebody might be doing journalistic things
on a podcast and say I'm a podcast and not
a journal list, but the reporting element of it essentially
is exactly the same.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
So from media law, you've still got an idea to
media law, you're not You're not governed by a code
of practice as yet, which is what we're trying to
bring in. But any podcaster still has to adhere to
media law. And I do get some creators that I
know getting in touch from time to time because as
a crime journalist you have to do in media law

(50:25):
qualifications to the highest level. And my advice is always
two things. Buy a copy of McNees Essential Law for
Journalists and use it as your bible. Learn it. You know,
if you've got in doubt, look it up in MCNAS.
And secondly, if you're insurer, find someone you trust to
seek advice from and that you know that is the

(50:45):
only way to ensure it. And you know, I do
give advice to people that I know in the field
and tell them when I think, I don't think that
I think this is on dodgy territory. Yeah, yeah, are
you writing down MCNAS? I did.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Yeah. Any time anybody gives a book, I'll write it down.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
There's Essential Law for Journalists is like the journalistic Media
Law Bible, and that you have to set your exams on.
So yeah, I always have a copy. Any creator should
have a copy of it. So just to.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Confirm here, it was a legal case of parents suing
for defamation. So I think you're right. So I mean
he may not have been picked up by law enforcement,
but the impact on the families would have still been
absolutely devastating, you know, to lose your child in such

(51:57):
a way, and then here's somebody with millions of listeners
say that that never happened, that the damage is just
it's it's it's it's it's being retraumatized all over again.
And if we're not being governed by you know, any
type of stringent rules, if we're unregulated as podcasters.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
We can do that. We can do that.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
We might get sued for defamation in civil cases, but
we we can sit here on these unregulated platforms and
pretty much say and do anything.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
I think if there was you know, an extreme, like
an extreme like a I don't know what, like a
snuff podcast, or somebody that was actually on there saying
I committed this crime and this is how I did it,
and this is.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Where I hid the drugs or whatever.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
If maybe if somebody was actively admitting to a crime
which could then be investigated and proved, they might be arrested.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
I don't know, but.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
But I would much rather sign up to the Ethics
Project and be under some type of regulation than to
have it imposed on me because podcasting is out of control.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
If that makes so, consolutely agree with you that the
ethical people have got to start distinguishing themselves, and some
people need to think about elements of their practice. For sure,
you know, what are sources for example, what sources are
being used verifying sources if you're looking at all cases,
that kind of thing is so important. But yeah, I

(53:37):
agree that. You know, of course all podcasters can be
suit for deformation. Anyone can be suit for deformation. Somebody
posting on social media can be suit for deformation. You know,
same with contempt of court. Anybody is Everyone is beholden
to the law. It's not just journalists, but actually a

(53:57):
regulator record goes above and beyond things like that. So
things like is it criminal to approach somebody who's seventeen
and has been the victim of crime? No? Is it ethical?
Absolutely not, And in the Code of Conduct it will
be under eighteen, So you can't approach under any circumstances.

(54:18):
You know, it's so called of practice does the same
I think it used to be sixteen. I think at
thirteen now in IPSOL. So just things like that that,
you know, persistent pursuit banning someone's door over and over again.
It is a form of harassment. In another in my
generalism and celebrity work, I argued that around attack journalism

(54:40):
and also persistent publications. So if a podcaster is focusing
on the same person who may or may not it
may not have committed a crime or hasn't been prosecuted
over and over and over and over again, that would
be harassment. To say the guilty of a crime would
be defamations. So it's a wild west. You know, the
people need to really stand this better.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
I think, yeah, yeah, my, you know, myself included. I
like to say that I'm an ethical content creator, but
that's me now compared to me, you know, six years
ago before I started this podcast and worked with so
many survivors, so I can see the shift. But that

(55:23):
doesn't necessarily mean that I'm in a place now where
I can stop thinking about it and I can and
I can just say, oh, I don't I'm ethical now,
Like like it's a goal you reach and then and
then you can't learn anymore. It's ever changing, it's ever
growing language. I mean, through your your journalistic work alone,
you must have seen how much language has changed with

(55:45):
with you know, just around domestic violence, for example, battered women.
You know, I mean, I don't know if I don't
think you'll remember that term from like the early seventies,
but but you know, we we certainly wouldn't use that
term anymore. And even now domestic violence is not something
that you hear about too much these days. So even

(56:07):
just keeping up with language that is used in everyday conversations,
in podcasting, in journalism, there's so much to consider when
it comes to ethics, and you can never be done so.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
And the ethics change and laws change. You know, what
is criminal changes. It has changed throughout history, it will
change again, you know. So you have to make sure
that whatever is developed is fit for, is adaptable, is
fit for wherever this genremer goes next. And of course
codes of ethics and things like the National Union of Journalists,

(56:45):
the Climate Ports Association over time, you know, over the
last hundred years, one hundred and fifty years, developed these
things in response to changes in technology, to changes in publication,
to you know, the growth of tableau cultures. These This
is a living breathing thing, the genres a living breathing thing,

(57:05):
and we have to adapt our ethics and our codes
of conduct and learn from mistakes, you know, to learn
it's you know, everyone makes misticks, but if we learn
for them and then try and do good next time around,
you know, it's it's then you know, we have to
be forgiving of that, I think absolutely absolutely, And one.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Of the best ways to do that is by just
having conversations with people that think differently.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
You know, I never questioned my ethics.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
I was like, Wow, I'll fall asleep listening to forensic
files and I'll wash the dishes listening to this story
of this brutal murder and not even really be interested.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
Or phased by it.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Just really horrible consumer rhythm of true crime content. And
I had it's just so connected. And then I started
to work with movement.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
Amongst true crime fans for more ethical content. Absolutely, yeah.
I think Crime Con and the way that it's pitched
this year was I thought was brilliant at that this
kind of four funting victims trying to fall fund ethical
content really thinking about this genre. And I think that
there's some fantastic creators out there who were really really

(58:27):
thinking about this stuff in a meaningful way, and like
that what we're what the work is now is to
educate audiences to spot that content. There's some brilliant crime
journalists in this country who spend you know, pain speak
staking hours investigating, going to court report and stuff. How

(58:48):
do you identify that content like that is the key
to the next step of the project. It's all well
and good having the code of conduct, but we've got
to get audiences to spot what is ethical. I mean
we talked about that earlier. Is for example, if I'm
doing something where I'm talking about because I do media
history and of course there's so many sensational stories and

(59:10):
things like that, but if I was doing anything on
a podcast platform, for example, I would not do any
probably cover any story that was after the nineteen fifties,
nineteen sixties. And that's my own ethics and my own
experiences and from mistakes I age in terms of reporting
on crimes historic events from the seventies and eighties without

(59:34):
thinking about that the victims' families could be retraumatized by that.
That I talk about my book and incident that always
sticks with me of a family member calling me and
asking why I didn't give them a heads up a
story was going to be revisited in the paper and
they were white. But at twenty three years old and
it was before I was born, it was a historic
event in my head, and I apologized and we talked

(59:57):
about it in the newsroom after. But that really told
me that, actually, if I'm trying to illustrate points by
using it might be a sensational story that I'm using
for the point of getting my message of cluster about ethics,
because it's often the best way to hook people in
that I'm not doing that with stories about living people

(01:00:19):
who might have right living and things like that. That's
a choice I met.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Yeah, Yeah, I think it's those interactions with people that
have the lived experience that makes a whole load of difference.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Though.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
You go to crime con and suddenly it's not just
it's not just a voice telling you about something that
happened in your ear while you hoover the house or something.
It's an actual person sitting in front of you telling
you about the worst day of their life. And that
humanizes it so much. That takes away that sort of

(01:00:54):
disembodied voice in the background that you may kind of
tune into and tune out of. It's a real person
that has had these real experiences and every time I
sit down with a cult survivor, that same experience happens.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
This is a real person that has experienced so much trauma,
had a really horrible upbringing, and to treat their experiences
as voyeuristic media pieces is not ethical. And the only
way I learned that was through those first hand experiences.

(01:01:28):
I never I would probably just still be listening to
true crime content in the same way if I had
never sat with somebody and had them say, look, this
is real.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
This happened to me.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
These are not just experiences that you're reading about in
a fiction book or in an audio book.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
This is still happening.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
There are still people that are being victimized in this way,
and boy, when that hits you in that way, it's
like a ton of bricks and all of a sudden,
you're like, WHOA, there's a whole other way to look
at this, to think about these things. And I know
that it's something that the listeners of this podcast have
heard a lot, and they'll be they'll be saying the
same tune because it's you know, it's part of an

(01:02:07):
echo chamber. I don't think many people that listen to
this podcast are people that are being challenged ethically, but
you don't know how far the conversations with them co
workers may go, or with family members. So I always
like to just have these conversations when we can, and
you're an expert in this, so I'm so thankful that

(01:02:29):
you've come to join me today and talk to me
all about the history of journalism, the history of ethics,
your future ventures. Will see each other in three weeks.

Speaker 4 (01:02:40):
Time at the Northeast Junior Crime for which I'm really
looking forward to and when I vent bright and I
think there's a few left if anyone wants to grab one.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
Yes, there's a I do no. Jaco has said there
are a few few tickets left, but.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
I'm not sure how big the venue is, so we'll
we'll have to see.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
How we get on.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
But I just wanted to ask one last question before
we say goodbye. Is it exam season? Do you have
like full dissertations to mark? Because you're a senior lecturer
at Newcastle University. I finished a master's paper recently. It
wasn't as long as it could have been, but it
was still a pretty hefty research paper.

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):
Yeah, yes, I've finished marking. We have our last board
for PGT and on Monday I teach on our master's
provision largely here. So we have two masters and Media
in Journalism and International Multimedia Journalism. It's ones more research
focused and one's more pactors focused. And get students all

(01:03:49):
over the world, which is a joy, and finding about
as you can imagine about how this all works legally
in China and in Italy and in America. Having India,
which is just some of the students we've had this year,
it's fascinating to me. Oh so yes, I will ask
both of the men, but I am out of marketing season.

(01:04:11):
We do have dissertations over the summer that we supervise
and stuff like that, and we've got you know, I
have some PhD students too who are working in you know,
different spaces and celebrity culture and crime cultures. So yes,
it's busy, but I love teaching. I love working with
people on their research and their projects. It's one of
the joys of my job.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
Have you ever had I'm not going to ask you
to say who or what the paper was, but have
you ever had like one student come to you with
a research idea and you've gone, wow, that's like groundbreaking.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
Oh yes, absolutely. I have students who've come with some,
you know, fantastic insights I want.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
A couple that spring to mind is about the growth
of virtual presenting in China about six seven years ago,
and virtual presenters saw early AI and how that was
coming out, and that really opened my mind to what
AI was going to do. In one of my little
sidelines at the university that I do is the AI

(01:05:14):
Steering Group. I'm Director of Education for the School of
Arts and Culture and so I do an AI steering
group and focus group and that's fascinating. I've had a
few more things in the vix at the moment with
my friend Beth and Jones from Cardiff University on afterlifs
of true crime victims and killers on social media, which

(01:05:38):
is fascinating. But yeah, and like the reanimation of photographs
and of crime scenes and things like that. There's just
so many interesting things that you can look at. The
students never ceased to amaze me with some of their things,
and just every now and again you get a lovely
bit of work that you talk they didn't expect, so

(01:06:01):
I did one. I had an essay last year on
pre communisty with China movie magazines and the stars that
somebody had got this box out of their NaN's loft
that had all of these magazines that had been her
mothers of like from the film industry that were not

(01:06:23):
archived anywhere, and they did this brilliant essay and it
was just what a joy for me to, you know,
see these magazines into this whole part of the world
that you didn't even know existed. This a history of
a country that you didn't know, I didn't know existed. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Well, I mean people might have got into trouble if
those boxes were ever found at one point in China's
history especially, so yeah, the fact that they survived and
were able to be used like a few generations on
is incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
It's actually the Chinese government has been I mean, there's
a lot of great archived materials from history. I mean
the kind of the the preservation of history in Chinese culture.
You know, we have students who work in them, who
do studies of the museum sector in that and in
that field, and there is a real drive I think
to kind of preserve into into an archive culture in

(01:07:16):
that way.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
Now yeah, yeah, do you ever bump into murder Mike
in the in the archives, the National Archives.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
I don't know if you know what I did meet
in m Crime Khan and we had a good chat.
That Murder My podcast, I just think is a fascinating
concept and it's such a really interesting idea. And I
think the interesting idea about it is like I was
thinking about after when you know, when we'd had I'd
had a conversation with them of different areas of like

(01:07:48):
I think that you would have very similar abilities. And
you know, London is obvious, but there's probably little pockets
of places right around the world where you could repeat
this bit of work and have like it's almost like
a social history of an area as well. I think
that's what's really fascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Yeah, yeah, well here in Liverpool, I bet you could
do a murder mile podcast about a one particular mile
stretch of land in Liverpool.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
You know, because you're going all the way back to
the slave trade.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
And you know the Titanic building, the docks that there's
a huge criminal underbelly at the moment in Liverpool anyway,
with sort of drugs and car thefts and bringing in
automatic weapons and things.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
So that's just modern day but history is.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
Rich in Liverpool, so yeah, maybe we need to get
my cup here to do a to do a murder
Oile Liverpool dedition likes.

Speaker 3 (01:08:43):
He just needs to move kind of like three four
miles probably Dona mode or to another city and then
you're off again with the new place.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
I'm glad you got the chance to chat because I
don't know many people that go to the National Archives
and we'll spend a whole day in there doing research,
but he definitely one of them. And his podcast is
i would say, ethically aligned with my ethics, and he's
just a great guy.

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):
We call it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
His name is Mike, but we call him murder Mike
because his name is Murder Mile his podcast names.

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
So yeah, I mean the archives are so rich in
this country. I mean we are the birthplace of print
culture in the English speaking language and therefore of popular
culture as we understand it, and you know that came
from print culture in this country. And so there's just
so much, it's never ending the fascinating things that you

(01:09:37):
can find. So for everything that made the book, and
the book was heavy enough, I probably had another one
hundred stories that just had to cut it down because
editor was in you can't have another chapter. I think
I have two extra chapters. He was like, no, no,
we can't afford print it if you made this book

(01:09:57):
any bigger. Oh my god. So you'll need to do
our like a work book.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
You'll need to do an and the workbook of ethics,
and it can be all of these cases you didn't use,
and we can talk about, you know, how different journalists
talked about these different cases and what we think is
the best approach.

Speaker 3 (01:10:17):
Yeah, I'd be really interested. Actually, I think I mean
I get asked to do a lot of the historical stuff.
I think there's a growing interest in the history of
the genre, and I think that's a could be a
positive trend because it really is the history of us.
You know. Klang media is like a mirror. It's like

(01:10:37):
it's a captivating mirror al most of the darkest and
the potential of who we are to the compassion that
it's all of those things, and of course it's it's
evolved with our laws and with who we are in
our sense of self identity and how we view our
place in the world over the last five hundred years

(01:10:58):
as people or is it as a public It's so
intertwined that that that I just think it's it deserves
the history of it deserves attention to kind of better
understand why we are the kind of people we.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
Are, absolutely, absolutely, And you know, you can track the
cultural shifts and movements and moments depending on which crimes
you're looking at from different periods of time as well,
so that in itself, you know, we talked briefly about
witch hunters and which trials before we hit the record button,
and how that kind of wore linked into you know,

(01:11:31):
the pamphlets and pre kind of newspaper growth and stuff.
So you know, you wouldn't find pamphlets about upcoming witch
trials today, I would hope. So it kind of reflects
the the times as well when you go back and
look at at different media pieces, which in itself is interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):
So I think that you're right, we don't, you know,
but I think that the representational dynamics of women and
certain aspects is and women who are being the subject
of some form of attack for whatever reason has elements
of witch trials, you know, it's still to this day,

(01:12:15):
and that they kind of somehow evil, intrinsically evil, like
this very moralistic language is applied to women and women
who are accused of crimes. I mean, look at the
kind of back and forth over Karen Reide. You know
yesterday was it yesterday with the verdict of the day
before and some of you know, some of the comments

(01:12:36):
and that there was an element of a witch hunt
to that at the beginning. And it's what's been interesting
is how the narrative over time, O Megan Markle, look
at how she was represented. You know, there was an
element of a witch hunt there, which was yeah, absolutely
so she did she was wrong, you know what I mean?

(01:12:56):
And so what I find fascinating is how the lang
language and the themes find their origins in things like
which pamphlets, But then the language still exists in some
of the themes still exist kind of four hundred years
on when we're no longer we're not religious in the

(01:13:16):
same way. So it's kind of put into this kind
of contemporary world of crime, of celebrity culture. Yeah, but
it actually it's roots of in things like which pamphlets?

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Is you would really like to talk to my two
friends Sarah and Josh at the end Which Charles podcast
where they work with different organizations and different individuals to
get certain women that were killed for witchcraft exonerated, like

(01:13:52):
hundreds of years after the fact. But they were talking
a lot about contemporary witch hunts and how actually it
does still exist day, just in different ways, in different manifestations.

Speaker 3 (01:14:04):
You know, people are persecuted for.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Their beliefs to this day, or for the way that
they might conduct themselves in small communities are ostracized in
that same language again is used to persecute them as witches,
even though we're in contemporary spaces as they would have
been persecuted during the Salem witch Trials era, because I

(01:14:35):
didn't not till I spoke to them that it wasn't
just because it was in Salem, it was just the
era that it happened.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
Was that period of time, Yeah, I know. I mean
the number of which accusations and tilds that you had
during the Civil War, particularly in this country, that got
really linked to the little idea that.

Speaker 5 (01:14:53):
You know, the King Charles was a papost which was
probably linked their of witchcraft because being Catholic at that
point was something akin to witchcraft, and that these.

Speaker 3 (01:15:06):
Women were somehow in league with the devil to defeat
the roundheads, and you know, you have this. One of
the pamphlets that I read was about cavaliers, sorry roundhead
soldiers just spotting this woman and hacking her to death
by a river because they said this she was cursing them.
And but the reporting of it was like, which was
perfectly understandable, given she was clearly in league with the devil,

(01:15:30):
like there was completely excuse for these last war times
or the massacre. There was a massacre of women of
cavalier women and not often an Irish Catholic women of
the lower soldiers by roundheads, of a complete massacre of
hundreds of women near Leicester. And I actually, when I

(01:15:50):
was researching the book, went and looked at the field
where it happened, because I didn't want to write about
what had happened to those women that day without kind
of being there to say what, because you have these
reports of how they came down the hill, they captured
them in the field. They're slaughtered, you know, hundreds of
women for just being traveling with the army, and it

(01:16:11):
was all the reporting of it in the Protestant pres
in London was like these were all witches. It was
perfectly and there was no condemnation of this acting well,
actually quite celebrated. So like, I do think that we
have something that we you know, the kind of level
it can reach is obviously might not be the same

(01:16:32):
in terms of the levels of violence. But I actually
think on a kind of mas skill, you know, something
like a witch drive. But I actually think that violence
against women is still informed by some of these logics
of like, somehow by being they deserved it. And I
think that that has maintained in some content and true

(01:16:56):
crime content and crime journalism. It's still theres this sense
of what did well, what did she do though to
deserve this massacree That was the entire content at the time.
So the witch drawers are often saying as this kind
of religious thing, but they're also heavily political things too.

(01:17:18):
The other other slot with women who were deemed as witches.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
Your insights are just endless. I could listen to you
talk about this stuff all day. I mean, it's like
a whole lifetime of information that you've absorbed and you
could just reel it off and put it out into
the world.

Speaker 3 (01:17:38):
I mean, I guess that's the lecturer in you, I think,
and I love it's the wrong word. I actually am
not a fan of contemporary true crime. That's the interesting
thing that people thinks. I wouldn't class myself as a fan.
I'm definitely a historian, fan of journalism, a fan of
fan of history is a thing. But I think that

(01:17:59):
I just think that we can really do something special
with this genre, and it has been done in the
past if we get enough people involved in it. So
I really do thank you for inviting me and you know,
talking about these things. And I've enjoyed it too.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
It's been an absolute honor and a pleasure, and I'm
looking forward to spending the day with.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
You on the twelfth of July in Newcastle and for dinner.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Yeah, I'm ready for a banquet. I'm ready to go
for a bank my first banquet. And thank you so
much for your time. I appreciate you and all of
your work and I'll see you in a few weeks time.

Speaker 3 (01:18:35):
Thank you so much.