Criminologist David Wilson Explains The Rise Of The Armchair Detectives | This Morning

[Music] there you go it has been hard to avoid the number of True Crime TV shows or podcasts that have encouraged us to play along and help solve Mysteries but when the armchair detective leaves the living room and steps into the real world could they risk doing more harm than good well Professor David Wilson certainly thinks so and he's now to explain why and the thing is you know we're all guilty of this we'll go have you seen this have you seen this Jerome have you seen listen to this podcast when does it cross over and start becoming an issue okay well the the obsession bit first it's not just this nation that's obsessed with True Crime these are Universal obsessions so globally people are obsessed with True Crime a few facts and figures holes um there are something like 3 000 True Crime podcasts you can choose from uh the daddy The Mummy of them all cereal has been downloaded 300 million times there are three TV channels and Britain alone dedicated to cro to True Crime five million viewers on average per week There's a crime True Crime convention that's happening in Glasgow this week and of course therefore that that that kind of breadth of what we mean by True Crime masks a variety of product and sometimes those True Crimes follow rules and guidance and other times because that they don't follow those rules and guides because of course anybody now can set themselves up as an armchair detective get on YouTube go on Instagram go on Tick Tock and say that they know the answer to the case that the police are investigating it is causing real problems now we've seen it over the last year or two so to tell us what the problems are well you know last week we had on the sofa a woman called Michelle Hadaway whose daughter Karen Hadaway was murdered when she was nine years old we went through a great deal of Duty of care to Michelle in terms of even showing her footage of the original police investigation trying to find at that stage her daughter so we have a duty of care to people who've been affected by these crimes plus legally as you both know I do documentary for Channel 4 and for the BBC and legally I have to follow a number of rules in relation to what I can say and to those things which I can't say even if I believe them to be true and that's the beginning of the real problem isn't it because of this democratization of social media anybody can set themselves up as a non-chair detector so that becomes particularly a problem when there is a case that's active absolutely and we can think about it even in the early days back to 2007 when Madeleine McCann goes missing um and you know the the the the kinds of conspiracy theories that emerged as a about the uh Jerry and Kate McCann who were described as Child traffickers by some people then we go on to the Christopher Jeffries case which was Joanna yates's who was murdered in 2010 her landlords and the kinds of things that were said about him and of course most recently and again you and I have both discussed this before we had the Nicola bully case which was an absolute live investigation in a public space and Tick-Tock armchair detectives turned up in that space and started reporting live as it were from an act of crime scene do you know what I don't understand is and and look anyone who's studied journalism you and I've done we've had to read mcnays which is the law book inside still is and and you have to abide by when you're a journalist but once a case is active once someone has been charged there's only certain things you can report on usually in the newspaper and radio on TV yet it seems in social media you can do what you want it's the wild west out there why are they living by a different rule because they understand if if at the end of the day if I said something if either of you said something that actually was libelous we would be sued but if you're somebody who has got a tick tock profiler or an Instagram profile there's no point in actually suing you you can ask them to remove the uh content that they've put up but that feeds into this bigger problem that's not emerging because our criminal justice system is disappointing at the moment you know only three percent of theft only five percent of rape ever get solved people have lost confidence in our criminal justice system and so they're doing it for themselves and that also feeds into conspiracy theory and that I mean then that feeds into most recently as we saw with Lucy letby and you've been contacted by people that saying that they think that this has been a cover-up of some sorts yeah I mean the people who have contacted me want to disagree with the verdict they see Lucy letby as innocent and therefore they will they will then suggest to me on email they'll suggest to me things that they felt uh proved her innocence as opposed to her guilt as I often point out the trial went on for 10 months I didn't sit through the evidence neither did they but if Lucy letby's Barrister wanted to take up those issues he would be perfectly entitled to do so either at the time or or when she appeals I also point out that the kind of conspiracy theories that they've got that certain medical experts expert Witnesses weren't telling the truth there was a cover-up on behalf of Institutions all of those things feed into you were talking earlier uh to Tom you know about global warming and the belief that global warming doesn't exist it's a conspiracy on behalf or or of a particular the Democrats in the United States there is this distrust at the moment about official sources of authority and True Crime suffers a great deal from that at the moment and just just to finish up because we know people love watching it and we don't want to make them feel bad about watching and what we're saying is there is a responsible way to be involved and if there's actually a true crime producers Association and they're saying it's okay to do this stuff just do it the right way so just calm everyone on that front David I love True Crime I don't just think an interest in True Crime is normal I think it's absolutely necessary because if we actually understand the circumstances in which we might fall victim to Crime we can do something to avoid those circumstances and if we understand that certain groups of people will be victimized as a consequence of True Crime documentary we can do something structurally to change their vulnerability by all means consume this but remember these are real cases involving real people and speculation sometimes does a great deal of Doubt wise words thanks David thank you so much thank you very much

Channel: This Morning

Views: 19,152

Keywords: this morning, this morning itv, holly willoughby, phillip schofield, this morning funniest moments, this morning interviews, alison hammond, itv

Id: 8SvFJclM9Fg

Length: 7min 1sec (421 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 06 2023