Copaganda: How Cop Shows Lie to You - Beyond The Scenes | The Daily Show

well i tell you one thing i put my career on the line for this they could take my badge and take my gun and call me a loose cannon but if i have to break down every law on the books then damn it i'm gonna do it cause i'm doing this podcast because this is beyond the scenes damn it this is where we dig into your favorite segments from the daily show and we don't stop until we solve them no matter what the cost and if you haven't guessed by now we're talking about police and how they're portrayed on tv shows it's called propaganda it's a piece we did about cop shows that have dominated tv for decades and how the portrayal of policing affects our understandings of law enforcement in the real world roll the tape police dramas are iconic hugely popular and now under intense fire from activists who say these shows far too readily portray cops as good and trustworthy while undermining real-life claims of systemic racism and abuse police not only consult on these shows but they're also very aware that their portrayals impact public perception and they have a vested interest in making sure that portrayal is positive yes believe it or not watching cop shows makes a lot of people see the police as infallible and honestly i don't blame any of these people i mean i'll admit a lot of my perceptions about reality have been shaped by tv as well part of the reason it's easy for tv shows to convince people that cops are always right and always good at their jobs is because that's what we want to believe right i think we can all agree that we want people who are going to enforce laws fairly and effectively so that we don't have to do it ourselves i know i don't want to do it now to talk a little bit more about this topic we're going to talk with the people that helped make this piece come together two hard-nosed detectives who brought this piece to life and they live for the daily show badge that's on their chest they both own blue bloods on vhs and dvd because they're die hards uh one of our deep dive producers madeline coons hello to you hello hello and one of our writers ashton womack ashton how you doing ashton i heard that you own the whole box set of law and order la yes i do only to learn what not to do uh and how to avoid the cops that's why i study it so for the people who missed this segment could you all i'll start with you madeline tell me what this segment is all about the segment's called propaganda and a lot of that is just like it's looking at like just the prevalence of cob shows i think if you think of i mean one is like the most watched genre of like all tv like it's the most popular genre of like all tv shows which is crazy um and just like the the absolute prevalence of that on tv and like how that actually influences our opinions in real life about law enforcement because as we mentioned in the piece like just like like most americans really have such little interactions with police you know i think it's like 20 of like all americans so like we really don't see the police that often and yet we have this like deep familiarity with like law enforcement and like the policing system in a way that doesn't quite make sense unless you take into account like the hours and hours of tv watched and like the media that we consume that statistic you just said was crazy yeah 20 of all americans 20 yeah only 20 percent 100 of all black people have definitely dealt with the cops and we're only like 13 of the country i know everyone was seven percent of these other seven [Laughter] they're like where are you step forward name yourself lucky individual uh ashton did propaganda work on you growing up in the sense of you see these shows where you know essentially the police are always right they do whatever it takes to get the suspect and you the viewer understand i had to break that rule otherwise that bad guy would have gotten away with the thing how much did television influence your views and opinions of the police uh it never influenced my opinions of the police because i had actual experience with the police so when you you can show me something on tv all day but if i go outside and experience a whole different reality i'm just disconnected i don't believe what you're showing me so i always grew up that's what like you said earlier it was a joke but i genuinely did not watch like my mom watched nypd uh new york undercover that was like probably the one show uh yeah that's the one that got black people we watched that i don't want to age myself but yeah i'm in ballpark your mama's age in the last act of every episode they would play music and it would be a live artist [Music] so you got to see black music and culture but we also took them down and yeah put them into a system that ain't going to treat them right fairly when they get in front of a judge that was my experience with watching tv or watching cops on the tv i i would watch cops and obviously root for the people running i'm like come on dog jump that gate jump the gate make it and that was mine you watch pop shows to root for the criminals yes i've had you know my own experiences you know i've i've said this you know i haven't said this often in life but i've had a gun pulled on me five times four of them were police officers jesus to the point where if just a regular dude on the street pulled a gun on me i like them odds better you almost would be like show me your badge in a in a weird way because you know there are certain cops that are gonna follow the rules and they the training worked fine but the likelihood of me running into a cop that is nervous is higher than me running into a dude off the corner who's nervous because if you just a regular ass dude robbing somebody is one of the boldest things that you've already decided that nothing can happen to you so within that boldness oddly i believe is some level of decorum you know like there's honor amongst thieves but not amongst cops apparent like that's i'm just saying if you told me a gun was gonna get pulled on me tomorrow and i got to choose random dude on subway track or police officer i would choose random dude on subway track and that's a huge testament to policing in america especially for black people that's crazy that you feel that way you should be calling you should be calling the cops on the guy but instead you have to if you call the cops they go come and pull the gun on you they don't think the robber is still in the he's still here and then like and you bring up honestly like roy you bring up a really good point about being like the nervousness of police because i do think like a huge theme and like like cop shows and procedurals is showing like how cops are not only like super human but like they're making these split-second decisions like with a very cool head and almost like moving in a way that's very confident on screen and so people kind of use that and transpose that i think when they think of cops in real life like they don't understand that there is like someone who is being nervous and not you know like it kind of it pushes that idea that like the decision that the cops are making is always right on tv because they're not hesitating the the one thing that i've always found ridiculous in any police show or any police movie is when they commandeer a regular person's vehicle to keep the car chase going like the robber takes a motorcycle and then the cop just like bad boys too is the best example where the fan marino was on the test drive and they snatched dan marino out it's like come on you wouldn't do that stop the car get yeah police hop the trunk get out get in i am in the middle of the sale you'll have to pull my gun oh [ __ ] damn marino what's up man back up dan hey you're the truth whatever you need officers hey marcus that's dan marino hey back up let me know how it rides oh he's gonna test drive the [ __ ] out this and it's always like dramatic they're like holding like some groceries and they're like what then they throw up some like it's good it's the flashing of the badge or not they're just like on police and they you know like they're just like who is this who is this random dude i'll say this the the conversation around propaganda almost ruined bad boys three for me i'm glad i got that one in just for a little while that came out january the same year of george floyd and like i was like whoo i'm glad i got my trilogy now i can stop watching them you can retire now yeah we waited right we knew we're like we're not going to do that to you [Laughter] what made you all want to talk about this piece like just walking through the the genesis of this conversation in the building did this start in the writer's wing ashton or did this start over in research in the producer ring with you madeleine um so before so i'm in a like a smaller department called we're called like the deep dive department so you know we do a lot of like looking into a lot of like non-headline issues um ashton is our very successful alumnus so last year back when he was in deep dive uh this was about it was like the end of june uh like the last week of june is like when this aired so a few weeks before that when we were talking about just the rise of like the black lives matter protests that were springing up like across the country and the world um after george floyd was murdered it was watching over and over again you know both just watching the news but also you know for work just watching the overwhelmingly peaceful protests and then seeing the the police brutality that was like being brought into that peaceful space um and just seeing those images over and over again and the videos of people who are very young you know but almost always black um and and ashton can talk more about this uh but you know one thing that i think got me started to think about this issue was just um or this piece was more just because you know ashton was protesting and the way that he was beaten by police officers and like seeing that happen so close to home in a way you know made me really it got me thinking a lot of just again as one of the not one of the 21 of americans who've ever really had uh run-ins or police encounters and just how looking at what was in front of me and how unmemorable the few and police like police encounters i've had in real life are that i just don't remember like i don't remember them that much because they're not they're not consequential in that way so it was really trying to like get to the bottom of that let's stay with that for a second ashton madeleine says she can't even remember most of her encounters with the police walk me through some of yours uh i don't even know where to start uh i mean even as like growing up and you grew up in a black neighborhood it's just ingrained in you i can't even remember the time when i ever thought like police were heroes or or good it's always been a negative interaction with my community to the point where like you play cops and robbers don't nobody want to be the cops everybody's like [ __ ] i'm i'm a robber you got no one you saw when you see someone coming in harassing your community you don't you don't see them as the good guys i remember i've had plenty of interactions when i was younger in texas i got arrested for weed twice when i was a teenager everybody you know obviously it's proven black brown white kids or kids are doing smoking weed at the same exact uh rate there's no there's no race doing doing it more yet i would hear these insane stories about how my friends would get pulled over and the cops be like oh you're good oh you're good but if they just smelled anything around us we were going to jail we had to deal with because we would go we were in probation we had to deal with getting put into the cycle that keeps people in jail especially black people telling going yeah exactly you get put in a situation just because of the color of your skin to be in a cycle of the carceral system you have to you go to probation they say you need to find a job and pay these and pay these fees or you're going back to jail well if i don't have no job and i can't i can't pay if i can't pay i'm going to jail i've had a lot of interactions with the police with the carceral system it's kind of designed for me to have those interactions it's clear as day that i was dealing with a racist system and so were all my friends around you and it's not until hearing stories like madeline's that it's like oh you really had a different experience dealing with the police it's like that made up a large part of my teenage youth and stress and my mom being disappointed in me and me thinking it plays a it has deeper effects on you because you don't think you're going to be able to succeed in life you feel like you're you've been thrown away and that was that's that's i'm sure i'm not the only person who feels that when we come back to beyond the scenes we're gonna talk a lot more about propaganda and i know both of y'all got a favorite cop show so don't even sit here in front like you don't start thinking now only one okay yeah don't lie no emily you're asking us to name only one i was like how can we how can we choose the one that i love i consider one of the best television series of all time and i'm so ashamed when i tell y'all the premise of the show ashton's gonna be furious madeline i'm gonna start with you we're talking about propaganda propaganda which is the deliberate or unintentional portrayal of police in a positive light to thus make law enforcement look very agreeable and as if our criminal justice system is working for everyone when we know that it isn't but even when we know that i still think we all have guilty pleasures there's foods that you're not supposed to eat that you eat you know they're bad for you so we all know there's tv shows that are kind of bad for your mind that you still sometimes check out madeline what is your favorite cop show of all time i mean i will say the one that um it's not one of the typical procedurals in terms of like cops but criminal minds is all about like the fbi like profiling serial killers it follows like the same exact formula and the template and like i don't know it was on all the time when um i was in grad school i was in ireland like the only tv channel that we got was just like criminal criminal minds like during the break and i was like well this is what i'm watching like and i just got so addicted to that show but it was also really crazy i was just like oh wow we're exporting like the way that we see law enforcement and policing to like the rest of the world um so but yeah no i watch like all of it and it's not good but it's hugely problematic ashton i already know your answer you watch new york undercover but that's only because malik yoga was in it and iced tea i grew up watching tj hooker syndication by that point william shatner just is a tough la detective always in a foot chase with action music playing and all of that 90s early arts uh new york undercover and then third watch was a show that i love it wasn't extremely popular but i thought it was well done but my goat tv show i have i have four tv shows that i think are just canon in this television universe the wire the sopranos breaking bad and the shield [Applause] oh okay yeah we definitely watched some of that we got violent there at the end yeah now when we talk propaganda and this is going to dovetail into my question about your you all's research into researching this this this segment but the shield for those who never saw it it was a show about a dirty cop unit it was based on the rampart unit in lapd that was just running roughshod over people in the 90s but in the show they're a dirty unit but they sometimes do the wrong thing for the right i'm a dirty cop and i steal but i still to pay for the private school for my autistic child see [Music] they like me right no i hate you there was a cop that was investigating the unit and this is the pilot of the shield i'm not even giving away the series the first episode there's a clean cop investigating the dirty cops and they kill him and the rest of the series is the lengths that they go to cover up that crime oh wow this kind of sounds good it's one of the best television shows ever written but i mean it was a big rise of like the anti-hero that's like he was like vic mackie and tony those are the only two characters that existed where i should hate you but you do good things because he would also do dirty stuff and solve the crime of the week but he would break all of the rules to oh my daughter's been kidnapped and it was a colombian so then he would go into the hood and chop off eight colombians on my bad that was their own colombian anyway we found it but we found her in the yeah it's very like ends justify means a hundred percent i bring all of that up to ask you all in the process of researching this what were some of the common themes that you saw through all of this in terms of the programming there's like three on the top of my head that come to mind and like uh the first one well the first one was that like all these like all these cop shows just like how many there are and like just like the format of the procedural of like solving a crime every week it really makes it seem like violent crime is like increasing or like this like reality that we live in where in fact like violent crime has been like trending downward over time so it's just like but this idea of just like seeing crime all the time makes us like deeply fearful and makes like having a police force necessary um which i you know is not the way that you need to view the police force especially if you're looking at like funding issues and things like that the second one was more like like this like weird like colorblind magical world where there's like a lot of black and brown people in roles and like judges and like other police officers so it's like there's race but racism doesn't exist so it's just like you're like oh so that's okay that he's chasing that guy because it's not about a systemic problem or like if they do deal with race it's like a very special episode and it's all about like one black cop dude i mean he's like he was mean to me and it's like must be hard for you you know and and then it's just like oh but it's like why are season four yeah it's like the whole yeah exactly like one guy not a system it's okay we're moving on and we're never gonna mention this again just like this idea of like i got i did what i had to do you know like this idea that like the way that we have normalized like the abuse like the intimidation the like boatloads of like illegal surveillance that these shows do and just like we normalized that feeling and so it's excused and justified and we think like the cops have to do it to be good and so because the police are the good guys that like it's almost like even when they're bad like the system only works because they the police break the rules like that's the only way the justice system works we can't just break protocol because we think it's right at the time and expect to get away with it normally i'd agree with you but in this case i'd rather ask for forgiveness than permission as you well know we will need a warrant to search the house agent callan these are exigent circumstances you let me worry about the legal ramifications if i could have been the rules a little bit to get a bad guy off the street i'm gonna do it and you would too forget warrants forget the rules it's on us to catch him whoo-hoo was cool although what that guy was actually saying is the constitution is for [ __ ] i guess the things that stuck out to me as well was like what they didn't show it was like it was like the same the people who wrote these tv shows were the same people who wrote uh florida's critical race theory laws they're like we're taking all the black stuff out you just you don't even pay attention to black stuff and it's like that's what i paid attention to having uh uh cops they're just trying to trying to make them lovable when i just never saw a lovable cop and i was like who are these who are these down to earth humane cops that i and why am i not getting any of them that that was that was what i noticed the most and like like meds was saying it was how they portray these cops as these like just anti-heroes and and what kind of really did stick out was like seeing them break the law even in the their own system like they couldn't say like like i was saying say if they needed something out of evidence locker they would break the law in the police department they would they didn't follow the law anywhere they'd be like uh let me i need something out of here out of the evidence locker and they'd be like sorry i'm not allowed to and then they smash their head up against the evidence locker and then they the evidence locker opens up and they're like guess i didn't need you anyway and it's like they were combination yeah it's like you broke the law in the department and it's like to me what it was upsetting to me because it's like well it's you're normalizing this behavior and you're allowing we were basically giving sanction to for officers to be that violent and that like aggressive even all throughout the entire time i'm so sorry i pitched the session because we had to watch so much like we had to watch so many episodes like we watched we watched a lot of tv it was brutal a lot of tv a lot of it was super bad um there was just like some crazy crazy epic like crazy episodes that i was like how there was a blue bloods episode where a cop like literally he chases a susp you know a suspect who is black into an apartment building like pulls out his gun and is like stop free you know freeze or whatever the guy on the second floor throws himself out of the window lands on the ground and then he like breaks his arm so he's like police brutality police brutality and i was like this is not but it was like a three minute long you know scene so like you can't we couldn't use it but i was just like who sees this and thinks that's what police brutality brutality wait don't shoot shut your mouth hey back inside the apartment turn around a chance against a wall i promise i'll throw you out that window he pushed me out the window give me some examples of stuff that you wish it made it into the piece but didn't because of time the kids piece the kids portion what's that the propaganda that gets shown to children uh and you know slowly indoctrinates them into believing uh that you know everything is good with the policing in america and getting them to which i mean you don't want to like which is it is a fine line to walk you don't want to introduce uh negative thoughts around uh policing but you do want to be honest to your kids about what policing in america is currently and so but we had a vast uh vast pr system targeted towards children for police paw patrol uh which i think is the most insidious one uh because it's like cops i mean dogs are definitely racist and then now they're cops there's doubly great dwellers dogs what dogs don't see colors they don't question why you met the paw patrol because i've met them i don't know man dogs don't see color and i don't trust that i'm like bro you should i see all of the paw patrol was german shepherds and you as a black person would feel some sort of way based on the german shepherd's relationship with the black community in the 60s but i'm not going to let you blank at all not all dogs what about reality tv where does reality television fit into playing a role there was a television show that used to come on true tv in the early arts this is when reality tv was really wild the show was called bait car and bait car was a show where they would have a nice car and leave the engine running and just leave it in a low income neighborhood i love that and then some random dumbass would hop in the car oh the keys in it yeah yeah and they would hop in it and then the kill switch would be activated they would be locked in the car and then the cops would pull up and take them to jail for car theft okay these guys are right up on the car now they're in the car driver's getting in standby big car heading north location the kill switch stalls the engine and locks up the windows and doors it's like the police were creating scenarios instead of going to fine like a show like that and i'll be honest you're right it was entertaining ashton it was because the funny in it was watching people trying to figure out how to get out the car and you and like for me when i would watch a bait car i would always i know what the outcome is going to be i know every single time they going to jail but i still be like come on brother it's like rooting for the washington generals versus uh the harlem globetrotters you know they go lose but yeah you they get they got one fan in me like yeah it just never really hit until you know you know a year or two later where you just like you knew like well should the police be doing this anyway it's entertaining then years later you go wait like that's really messed up yeah reality tv is almost like its own you know own piece in itself because it's just so expansive um so we really didn't have time to fit that into the piece but like we did we did look into a lot of reality tv and it's deeply disturbing to watch and it's also just um i learned a lot more about the show cops though which yeah i think everyone watched whether they realized it or not it was on everywhere it wasn't all bad man it's like sometimes i got to watch some of my favorite clips from yeah i got to watch some of my favorite clips from cops there was one clip on there i remember watching it was like the this like one this one lady she went to a cop and she was like this lady this drug dealer i was trying to buy drugs and she ain't selling me the drugs and then the cop was like what uh show me who it is she went to the lady and she was like bam did you not sell her drugs and she was like first off officer i'm not a drug dealer i'm a prostitute i don't sell crack i'm a prostitute and then we were like what [Music] what is that so there's classic clips don't get it wrong oh cops got some you know good good stuff but also it's a terrible show it's a terrible [ __ ] what i didn't know actually before doing this piece was just like the history behind cops and how it was really used as this like pr vehicle so it started to like get big after it was like a year or two after the um the police beating of rodney king is like the show cops was invited by um they got permission to film in l.a and it was specifically to rehab the image of the lapd to make them like give like receive better coverage and like that became the cops models they know what they're doing they're rehabbing their image like when justin bieber did the roast to justin bieber and it's like oh this is to rehab his image that's literally yeah that's cops of the san diego police department cops did get taken off the air during the george floyd uprising in this country at least no new episodes i've heard rumors that it's starting to seep back into syndication in certain places but uh i want after the break i want to talk to you all about the future of propaganda and where we go from here now that we as a country are actually aware of what the hell is going on also we need to talk about why all these rappers end up being cops at some point llc a cop on ncis iced tea is a cop um the ice cube is a cop and ride along we need to talk about that transition from after police to how much you're gonna pay me an episode can i apply to the police this is beyond the scenes we'll be right back i want to talk about where can we go from here in changing public perceptions through entertainment because i'm going to be honest i have two cops in my family chicago suburbs and a mississippi state trooper a lot of cop work is mundane it's weird it's it's talking to a prostitute who supposedly sold me drugs but she's not even a drug dealer it's that type of stuff a television show's job is to tell a story to wrap you up in the story with drama and conflict so you need conflict if you want to show to be good if you're telling them the truth about policing is probably going to be boring you need some dr i'll give you a perfect example ashton the shield season five anderson was the villain he killed a girl and hid the body and they spent in the whole season trying to find the body of this girl vic mackey finds out that anthony anderson's son is in prison in a minimum security jail so vic mackie has his son transferred to maximum security where all anthony anderson street gang enemies are incarcerated knowing what they'll do to a son and vic mackey used the threat of prison rape and traumatizing a 19 year old to find the body of the dead girl and bring the family justice can can we all vote right now for the shield dramatization podcast just by roy i would listen to that was you not enthralled by this yeah i'm lit yeah that's how you get leverage on a criminal i i know that that's not realistic but are there any like because to me there are aspects of police work that i don't know anything about and that i do to a degree help inform me i will say that law and order svu by and large was a great part of my education on just how terrible a gender men are um and that's a show it's not an easy show to watch even with iced tea with this perm i feel like that's why they have iced tea in that show is to make it more digestible for black people because you know it's so serious and heavy and then iced tea just walks around man he did it man we gotta take him down whoa is that a body over there he's like yeah that's a box there's somebody over there yeah no i well 100 that is like one of the things that we we're running into not running into but we we discovered is and we kind of already knew is that a lot of what they show is violence they over sensationalize sensationalize the violence aspect of police work and they minimize the actual police the work of the police work which when you you hear these protests you hear about it all the time you hear that like the police are overworked they have too many jobs there should be mental health counselors going out for certain uh to deal with certain problems instead of sending a police officer that's why you know a large percentage of police shootings end up being disabled mentally disabled or handicapped people because they just they only know how to some not they only know how but they're dealing with problems that shouldn't you need a hammer you probably should give to other people but it is an over sensationalization over sensationalization of police violence and i think you definitely got to start there madeleine do these shows have a responsibility to be socially conscious or to just be entertaining i mean i think there's there's a space between there where it's like if you're gonna try to push like a realistic genre like policing doesn't exist in a vacuum in our society it has like very real implications um i mean i will say watching svu which is a show that i loved and i loved olivia benson it did make me feel like i would be kidnapped at any time anywhere in the city uh because that's what happens at the beginning of the episode um of like every episode like this woman has been kidnapped they will find they will beat up the suspect until they get her location and they will save her just in time but yeah i mean i think you know one other thing one of the reports that really helped this piece was uh color of change did this like massive study of cut like police procedurals uh and they released this like really large report it's called like normalizing injustice and one of the stats they found which i think ashley you can talk more about this being a black writer you know in often a very white space but 81 of the writers on these scripted tv shows are are white so you're you don't have the demographics reflecting the reality so i mean maybe it's less of a an outright responsibility but like if they're going to try to tell stories it's like you don't have enough voices in the room to actually tell that story and to tell it balance and tell it properly yeah so i think that's why we're seeing a lot of these uh a lot of these storylines no i know viacom cbs who's a proud parent company of the daily show in the beyond the scenes podcast viacom cbs and other networks they've hired you know a lot of consulting groups to police their portrayal of people and the criminal justice system in their program and it's almost like they've like companies have had to hire like it's not enough to just cancel cops and say you're not gonna show cops anymore but now you need someone to come in and audit your whole situation to find where your racial blind spots are and that's you know you know all of the paramount but it's crazy that you have to do that when you can just hire people of color or people who've experienced those things you wouldn't need a consulting group if you you know have if this country's done the right thing and put people and allow people to tell their own stories i'd say just especially like if no harm was coming of this like maybe they don't have a social responsibility but like we've already we've seen that these shows are like actively shaping our perceptions of police right in a way that doesn't match reality and that might be deeply harmful for certain people in society who have a lot less power so yeah i think there's i think something has to change um and it has to change just as much behind the camera as in front of it so well i think one of the things we did learn while researching this was how we probably said it already but how these shows literally they created the perspective of of kind of black people in policing and why it was okay to be overly brutal to black people in america because they're watching these police shows and the criminals though though there was this notion of having like the the cop shows would have black police chiefs and all that you would still have the criminals uh be uh over overwhelmingly black or plcs and it kind of justified in america's mind the brutality and that it needs to happen and that is like that that is the problem when someone else has control over your image they they have the control over my image they can do with it what they will and they put that image in other people's minds and now i have to deal with the consequences of what they've put in people's minds thank you so much excuse me i'll go go ahead no i just i had a question for you because you mentioned that you had police officers in your family and i'm wondering how they're affected by watching cop shows and like how if that changed your perception of watching cop shows because i didn't i mean i don't have any law enforcement in my family so it really was like being raised by olivia benson you know talking to them taught me the mundaneness the the overwhelming mundaneness of police work which i think feeds into the when something oh you got some action it feeds into that oh [ __ ] what's up man this is everything that i've been trained to stop because this is the one thing that i should always be careful about like when i saw bad boys too the thing that's always made me laugh about police work in general on television is after they shoot somebody and then they just go on about the rest of the case like you're supposed to get pulled off and take 14 days and go see the side of the psychiatrist yeah you're supposed to go do all like bad boys too they blew up the whole freeway and there was no paperwork they're just like great there was no paperwork good job boys keep it the case you're destroying 16 billion dollars worth of city damage and god damn it you do it again and like you get comp a pat on the back they went to cuba without clearance from the government save will smith's girlfriend and blew up a mansion so they bad boys 3 should have just been them coming back from suspension for the last 15 years i i have a black question for you uh madeline just sit this one down i was like please don't say me please don't say me i thought he was gonna say denzel's oscar in training day proud moment or no as a dirty cop i mean obviously i think it's very nuanced proud moment because wasn't it like one of the first times a black actor was able to get uh be awarded that at that height but it had to yeah but it had to be for being a crooked dirty cop i mean they could have gave that to carl winslow he you know he should have been if we're why you got why we gotta start with the dirty cop carl winslow was a great cop and he taught america uh good values and he didn't get awarded at all so i don't know as far as propaganda goes carl winslow really did come home with a good attitude for somebody who was on the chicago pd carl winslow was chicago pd yeah he and urkel was his worst problem no the gds down the street you're worried about the wrong are these changes enough it's what's happening is that enough or is there more that needs to happen and if so what else can we do or do we just wait and see do we just blacken up these writers rooms backing up these diversity panels and consulting hire black consultants and see where that gets us in a couple of years or are there more drastic things that you all would like to see happen in the in the short term i think it's not enough but i al i don't think it's enough i think we are skimming the surface of how we are truthfully telling the the nation's um the the relationship we have that america has with the police i don't think there's any story out there that's actually actively portraying how current modern day america america's relationship with the police that not that being said that doesn't mean to go on the other opposite end and just be like all cops are better to you know have a show called a cab and then just uh you know just show the negativity uh and only show just the worst the worstness of cops because that's not the case either but we have to find a way to tell the true story of policing in america i know it's entertainment i know it's tv i know it's entertainment but for the past like 30 years it was maybe longer than that it has not told the real story and it's had a negative consequence consequence on many americans madeleine what stories surrounding policing in our criminal justice system would you like to see told i mean i agree with ashton i think that we haven't really seen a real like a real portrayal so i do think showing that i also think they're i mean there just needs to be more space for other stories that doesn't like that don't only tie black people to policing as well right like we can't only have stories of tragedy you know i think like showing the full spectrum of humanity which is often not shown on police procedurals like you just need space for like other shows as well um but again a lot of that change happens like you know in the writer's room i mean i guess i'm kind of curious now like because you're both actors like would you want to be would you be in a police procedural like would you take a role as a cop or a detective if i want to play a slave no no i just i'm just because of just like how like i guess that's like if it was changed i mean i just i don't i don't i think it has to change a lot but i don't know exactly how i had a sitcom that was originally in development here at comedy central where i played a probation officer and for me i wanted to show the redemption side of the criminal justice system because i feel like that's something that we don't see enough of most shows that involve the criminal the legal system it's either the cop it's the case or it's jail but there's never anything on the other side of that i would say the only show in the last couple of years to even come close to that is the last og on tbs and that's really more the first two seasons where we see tracy morgan's character going to a halfway house and that's really not about the criminal justice system as much as that show is more about one man's journey back from all of that it's not really peeling back the layers of probation and the [ __ ] and everything you go through and keep this job but you got a job but the job is out of your travel district and the judge won't give you clearance to go to the next county to work so now you're in violation because you're two payments behind on your restitution like they don't really get into that on the last og but that's definitely you know that's definitely been a show that i've enjoyed seeing kind of explore just a different part of that world they do that in atlanta there's like scenes in atlanta in in the in the tv show atlanta earned or um travis gambino's character he gets arrested and you kee and throughout the season you see him still having to go to probation office he calls out oh wow i have oh if i don't pay i'm going to jail and people i don't think a lot of americans recognize that when you get arrested nobody it means specifically especially for something as in inconsequential as marijuana there's millions of americans dealing with have been put in a system where they their their life is now a jenga a jingle table and one false move can have that entire thing come crumbling down and that's that's the situation you're putting you're putting a situation where your future is literally at jeopardy and that pressure you feel it's not just dealing with police brutality the brutality continues after you get after you come out of jail and trying to get a job trying to vote trying to change laws there's so many things that you still have to deal with and the pressure is constantly on you so yeah i want to see more stories like ashton's story because like you were saying it's very like what you're saying is like i've you grew up around a lot of people who had very similar experiences with like you but yet that's not really reflected like the truth of that is not reflected in on screen so those are the stories that absolutely need telling ashton's just an innocent kid ashlyn's an innocent kid minding his business but he knows the guy that sold the drugs that od'd the girl and detective vic mackie pulls up takes ashton i'm not a drug dealer i'm a prostitute yeah oh yeah you're not a drug dealer right now but if i take this crack cocaine and put it in your pocket that's 10 years where's tea bake tell me where tea bake is i ain't telling you [ __ ] cobbler that's all the time we have for today i'm pretty sure we fix propaganda special thanks to you madeline and special thanks to you ashton uh for going beyond the scenes with me today hopefully we've taken you behind the scenes take care everybody um i'm gonna go re-watch the shield now i'm sorry look i know the music is playing i know it's supposed to shut up now i don't care forest whitaker was internal affairs and was investigating vic mackie thick mackey went on a date with his ex-wife just to break him down cold world [Applause] we'll see y'all next week [Music] hey [Music] [Applause]

Channel: The Daily Show

Views: 248,920

Keywords: Tags (500 characters MAX) the daily show, trevor noah, daily show with trevor noah, the daily show episodes, comedy central, comedians, comedian, funny video, comedy videos, funny clips, noah trevor, trevor noah latest episode, daily show, trevor, news, politics, roy wood jr, madeleine kuhns, ashton womack, cops, police, copaganda, tv, reality tv, cop shows, police violence

Id: 5z16cRwaRnA

Length: 45min 46sec (2746 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2021