True Crime Podcasts: Are We Helping or Hurting Victims?

A Question I Ask Myself Every Episode

Before I publish any episode of NaturalQueen77 TV, I ask myself a version of the same question: Is this helping or hurting?

Am I giving a victim's story the dignity it deserves? Am I treating the people involved — the victims, their families, even the perpetrators — as human beings rather than characters in a narrative? Am I contributing something meaningful to the public understanding of crime and justice, or am I just serving up violence as entertainment?

These are not comfortable questions. They don't have clean answers. And I don't think anyone in this industry can claim to always get it right.

But I think we have to keep asking them.

The Case for True Crime

True crime media, at its best, serves genuine public interests.

It generates investigative leads. Episodes dedicated to cold cases have produced tips that led to arrests and identifications. The podcast Your Own Backyard — focused on the disappearance of Kristin Smart — is widely credited with generating attention that contributed to the eventual arrest and conviction of her killer, Paul Flores, more than 25 years after her death.

It educates the public about the justice system. Most people have little direct experience with police investigation, criminal prosecution, or the realities of incarceration. True crime, when done carefully, can illuminate systemic failures — wrongful convictions, investigative bias, prosecutorial misconduct — that the public has an interest in understanding.

It amplifies marginalized cases. As I've discussed in other pieces, media attention correlates with investigative resources. True crime coverage of cases involving victims from communities of color, low-income communities, and LGBTQ+ communities can bring attention to cases that would otherwise go unnoticed.

It provides a sense of community for survivors. Many survivors of violent crime and families of victims have told me that true crime media made them feel less alone — that hearing their experience reflected in a public conversation, however imperfect, was meaningful.

The Case Against

The criticisms of true crime media are serious and deserve honest engagement.

Re-traumatization. Families of victims often have no control over when, how, and how many times their worst experience is retold by strangers for an audience that treats it as entertainment. Some families have been very vocal about their pain at seeing their loved one's death become content.

Exploitation. True crime generates significant revenue — in advertising, subscriptions, merchandise, live shows. The people generating that revenue are not the victims or their families. There is an inherent tension between the commercial incentives of the genre and the dignity of the subjects.

Inaccuracy. The hunger for compelling content creates pressure to overstate certainty, omit context, and dramatize events. Suspects who were never convicted have been tried in the court of public opinion by true crime media, with real consequences for their lives and families.

The entertainment problem. At its worst, true crime content aestheticizes violence. It frames real suffering as a thriller, complete with cliffhangers and production music. It teaches audiences to seek stimulation from murder rather than empathy for the people it destroys.

What Responsible Coverage Looks Like

I don't think the answer is for true crime media to stop existing. The public interest value is real. But I do think there are standards our industry needs to hold itself to — standards that not everyone currently meets.

Center the victim, not the perpetrator. Too much true crime content is functionally about the killer — their psychology, their methods, their biography. The victim becomes a plot device. Responsible coverage reverses this. The victim is the subject; the crime is what happened to them.

Get consent where possible. Before covering a case where family members are alive and accessible, make genuine efforts to contact them. Explain what you're doing and why. Be honest about the format. Be prepared to hear no.

Include content warnings. Listeners should be able to make informed decisions about what they expose themselves to. This is particularly important for survivors of trauma, who may not anticipate how certain content will affect them.

Be honest about what you don't know. In true crime, certainty is often the enemy of accuracy. What witnesses reported, what investigators believed, what prosecutors argued, and what is actually true are not always the same thing. Label speculation clearly and distinguish it from established fact.

Acknowledge the racial and class dynamics of the cases you cover. If your content catalog skews heavily toward white, middle-class victims — and most true crime content does — be honest about that and actively work to change it.

Don't name suspects who were never charged. Podcasts and documentaries have seriously harmed the lives of people who were suspects but never prosecuted. In the absence of a conviction or charge, naming an individual as a likely perpetrator is a form of publication that can cause irreversible harm.

My Own Standards

At NaturalQueen77 TV, these are the commitments I try to hold myself to:

Every episode that discusses violent crime includes a content warning. Every episode is sourced from court documents, law enforcement records, and verified public sources, with the acknowledgment that even verified sources contain errors. I avoid dramatizing or aestheticizing violence. When I discuss suspects, I am careful to distinguish between what was alleged, what was charged, and what was proven.

I don't always get it right. I learn from mistakes when they happen. I try to do better.

The standard I hold myself to is this: Would the victim's family, if they listened to this episode, feel that their loved one was treated with dignity? That is the bar. Not entertainment value, not download numbers — dignity.

The Conversation We Need to Keep Having

The true crime genre is not going away. The public appetite for it is genuine and, I believe, reflects something real: a desire to understand how violence happens, how justice works or fails to work, and what it means to live in a world where terrible things occur.

What we owe that audience — and more importantly, what we owe the people whose stories we tell — is to meet that appetite with rigor, empathy, and honesty.

The question isn't whether to tell these stories. It's whether we're telling them well.

If you have feedback about how NaturalQueen77 TV covers cases, or if you are a family member of a victim featured on this podcast and would like to reach out, please contact me through the website.