Will Hanrahan - Factual Producers Should Look To Journalists When Setting True Crime Standards

Established journalistic good practice shows how to balance ethical conundrums with exposing wrongdoing – so let’s not reinvent the wheel, says the founder of FirstLookTV.

I don’t like secrets. They allow wrongdoing to go unexposed.

But there are many secrets kept each day that affect the lives of us all – and in some cases, cost lives. Baroness Casey’s work to expose the dangerous inadequacies in the running of the Metropolitan Police has shone a light on routine practices which had become so common in the Met that they were accepted by serving officers as ‘the norm.’

If that same light had been shone on the Metropolitan Police ten years earlier, it’s possible that women would not have been raped by serving officers – and one woman might still be alive.

Scrutiny only gets really serious after a tragedy, so it took the death of Sarah Everard for the establishment to truly listen to the whispered rumours
of a toxic, misogynist, racist and homophobic culture residing deep in Britain’s biggest Police force.

I got an insight into that culture years ago when FirstLookTV exposed how four young men had been lured to their death by Stephen Port using a
dating App. Their murders were initially written off as gay sex games gone wrong and not thoroughly investigated – the truth was only exposed
through the dogged work of two sisters of one of the victims.

Our programme about Port – available now on Netflix – battled its way to screen originally on a smaller linear channel, Crime+Investigation, where a switched-on compliance team navigated the implications of our criticism of the Met and allowed broadcast.

Delays in releasing full coroner’s reports, and the Met’s refusal to comment until the Independent Office for Police Conduct had released the findings
of its inquiry into the issue meant that basic failings in the Met’s performance were kept from the public for four years.

They might have been kept from the public longer had we decided not to proceed with our film.

So when I read of the refreshingly open moves taken by Kate Townsend at Netflix to self-regulate an industry-wide approach to production in the factual space, alarm bells rang.

Those looking for safeguards in the factual space need look no further than the lessons learned - literally - over centuries of journalistic practice and over a century of Broadcast practice.

A group of true crime producers recently, FirstLookTV among them, agreed to set up a workshop to establish a type of ‘Guild’ of producers who work
to a set of journalistic standards in our highly problematic genre.

The clue in our aims is that key word - journalistic. The protections we need as an industry to ensure ‘good behaviour’ amongst producers are already there. They can be found in Ofcom guidelines, traditional journalistic standards and BBC producer guidelines.

Corralling them into a post-internet world snapshot for producers is probably a good, practical idea. However, trained journalists will tell you that balance, fairness, accuracy and avoiding defamation and contempt are things we work with on a daily basis.

Factual productions which fall into the journalistic space, but which are not run by trained journalists, would do well to apply the same values as we journalists have for generations.

Meanwhile, we need to discuss the biggest issue facing factual producers - the Wild West that is online content, and behaviour aimed at gaining
online clicks.

Who regulates TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube... and dare I say, Netflix?

As well as codifying our own behaviour to ensure standards, factual productions need to operate in a fair world where the online content provider is subject to same regulations and the same standards expected of our community.

That may not ever be possible - the self-styled citizen-journalist genie is out of the bottle.

But as we reach towards agreeing how legacy ‘mainstream’ content providers should behave, let’s not forget what we often try to achieve: scrutiny
of those who make decisions.

Best be careful not to self-censor so much that we let the powers that be get away with keeping too many secrets.

My Lover My Killer - 4th in Netflix US Top Shows

Copycat Killers and My Conscience

The true crime genre has enjoyed a well-documented surge in popularity over recent years. In particular, streaming platforms like Netflix have enjoyed huge success with cinematic, box set series such as The Staircase, Making A Murderer, Evil Genius and, most recently, Don’t F**k With Cats.

Accompanying the True Crime content, there has been increased discussion about whether the documentaries themselves might in fact be driving fame-hungry criminals.

I don't agree, but I listen to and respect the argument, visiting the issue on a weekly basis with my team - and my conscience.

The three-part 'Cats' on Netflix tells the story of the hunt for one of Canada’s most infamous killers, Luka Magnotta, who courted internet infamy by circulating videos of himself killing kittens, and then murdering and dismembering a Chinese student. Soon after launching, Cats was listed as one of Netflix’s Top 5 most-watched documentaries.

As lead creative in a production company which made the Netflix/Discovery hit ‘Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer’, the fact that this awful man began his psychopathic life by attacking animals was no surprise. That is just one of the 'tells' which analysts discover when investigating serial killers.

What worried me is this: Which came first, the psycho or the TV programme about psychos? Do our investigations give susceptible people ideas?

Should we stop making them?

We at FirstLookTV regularly have 'conscience' meetings where we discuss why we are making our programmes. And the answer consistently comes back – because justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done

And actually, there is little evidence supporting the idea that TV programmes which are heavily regulated create copycats - unregulated social media and less overseen video games are in the frame for that.

The number of cases we investigate where the perpetrators have been inspired by violent video games or something related to the web is striking.

Books, too.

When investigating the 'Crossbow Cannibal' - Stephen Griffiths - Police discovered a room full of books about Serial Killers in his flat. He could justifiably claim that they were part of his studies as a Criminology student at Bradford University - but that was just part of his cover story.

He longed to be a serial killer like his hero the 'Yorkshire Ripper' (Peter Sutcliffe) and targeted sex workers in the same way. He claimed three lives and ostentatiously posed for a security camera with his chosen weapon - a Crossbow - later confirming he did that to gain notoriety.

But the camera he was playing to was there, as far as he was concerned, to ensure his murder would get on lightly regulated Social Media.

I firmly believe that our true crime shows act as a deterrent and to serve the justice system itself.

Across the world there are versions of the English village green 'Sticks' were wrong-doers would be pilloried after their crimes were discovered. Want to find where most judicial hangings were carried out in London? Go to Marble Arch and walk north for 2 minutes - Central London to attract the biggest crowds.

The theory then, as it is now, is that justice must be seen to be done or it won't be done at all. I could also argue that the justice system itself belongs to us all. We pay for policing, the courts, the probation system and so on.

We deserve to know what is done with our taxes and we want to know the system works. The unspoken rule of true crime docs is that the bad guy always has to be caught. Channels like Investigation Discovery, Crime & Investigation and Sky Crime tend to want programmes where the crimes are solved.

Over a 30-year career in TV, I have worked across multiple genres – from current affairs through to factual entertainment, sitcom and entertainment. The true crime genre is the least lucrative, be assured. If I didn't think it had social value I would not do it - and, by the way, it is the hardest job I have ever done.

If you agree, disagree, or want to share your thoughts on this debate, join us at Britain's biggest True Crime event 'True Crime Live' - truecrimeliveuk.co.uk.

Meet, marry… murder? Where true crime meets comfort

The last time I counted, there were eight TV channels in the UK and many more in the United States, where the only output a viewer could watch is about crimes - real ones.

And not just any crime - ones which will chill you to the bone.

Stories of wives killing husbands, husbands killing wives (much more common), love turning to loathing as passions get out of control.

The means of murder can make a viewer think twice about what they do. I'm still fidgety every time I open the freezer at home if I come across a frozen curry. Lakhvir Singh stole into the home of her lover in West London to leave a meal for him in a tupperware container - but not before she had laced it with poisonous aconite, brought back from India especially for the purpose of killing him and/or his fiancé.

Lakhvinder 'Lucky' Cheema died - his partner surviving only after a battle fought by doctors who had feared the worst. The story, told in our series ‘The Lady Killers’ on Discovery Quest in the UK and The Justice Channel in the US, rated highly. People tuned in and watched until the end of the programme.

Why? It was a deeply tragic story told mostly by 'Lucky's' nephew Gurinder.  Gurinder had answered his uncle's agonised telephone call asking for help, raced around to his home and helped the couple into a car before speeding off to hospital with both Lucky and Gurjeet Choongh, his new fiancé. This was the stuff of nightmares - but nightmares we choose to watch.

When we carry out research into why and who watches True Crime programming, we find that it’s mostly women, but not exclusively, and they tend to be younger - aged between 28 and 44. Both they and the men who watch, who tend to be older, consistently tell us that they find it comforting when a killer is caught and successfully convicted. The process itself reassures viewers.

And watching the lives of others actually serves to comfort us - My wife or my husband is not like that. My girlfriend would never get so jealous that she would kill.

Odd though it may sound, watching True Crime documentaries provides a comfort blanket, and no more so than when the tale being told is about love which has turned to loathing. We all understand love, we 'get' passion, we can relate to rejection. It's the stuff of life that we recognise and know that, occasionally, things don’t work out. Who of us has not been dumped? Many discover the love of their life has run off with someone else - it happens. And when it does, we cope - we know how deeply we were hurt and still we got on with life. Almost all of the time, we know whatever has happened was probably for the best.

Seeing how things work out for those who don't 'move on' again comforts us and confirms to us that we are normal  - we become relieved we are not them.

We’ve just started making a series called ‘Meet, Marry, Murder’ looking at these kinds of stories. You can take a look here. As we do our research, we see lives becoming embroiled in emotional turmoil and those involved failing to cope. Love turns to obsession, creates deep insecurity, and drives people to murder.

But here's the good news - most of us aren’t like that, and those that are, get caught. That's the reason people keep coming back to the true crime genre.

Autumn 2020 sees FirstLookTV host one of the first true crime conferences in Europe. Former detectives like Peter Bleksley of Channel 4’s ‘Hunted’, former police officers turned authors like Clare Mackintosh, criminal profilers and criminologists will gather to reveal the cases which have left them reeling.... Find out more and book here: True Crime Live.

Inside the mind of a Serial Killer, Series 2

I’m going to own up. I got a real buzz from the news that Netflix was airing our True Crime series Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer.

As a long-time BBC man who spent almost as long supplying ITV, too, there is a school of thought that says new kids on the block like Netflix are ‘not quite’ as important.

Not for us. It means we have gone global. Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer is available anywhere in the world.

And it means we have gone young. My fab 4 children don’t watch TV – they watch a screen nearest to them that offers a portal to Netflix, Amazon Prime and the TV channel-content via the traditional broadcaster websites.

The first series has done well enough for Netflix and others (like the Discovery channel) to commission our second season which began production this week. Featuring the hugely talented and uber clever Linda Papadopoulos (pictured) as our ‘mind hunter’ who brings her insight into the psyche of some of the world’s worst serial killers. Dr. Linda has become one of the most well recognised faces on British TV. Her expert opinions are also regularly featured on news programmes including, CNN, Sky News, ITN news and BBC24. Dr. Linda has also appeared on American TV shows such as “The Early Show” on CBS and on CNN.

But she seemed to get a buzz, too, from the series being available on Netflix and in season 2 she will be seen a lot more than in series 1. She kicked off the week with an interview about Ireland’s only serial killer; Kieran Kelly.

In 2014, Kelly became known as the London Underground Serial Killer in a book alleging he had killed 31 people and claiming ‘the authorities’ had kept it quiet to allay the fears of daily commuters.  However,  more systematic research suggests no cover-up with an albeit macabre criminal record which probably claimed the lives of as many as 15 people. Not all killed on the tube.  

His story is a mystery we lift the lid on in our new series and the title does give it away, as we get Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer.

We Love Our New Camera

Reporter Will Hanrahan, the FirstLookTV Creative Director, was impressed by both the quality and quantity of his new colleagues on his first day working for the flagship BBC Programme ‘Watchdog’ in 1990. The film had a cameraman, a camera assistant, an electrician and a runner. There was a sound recordist, too.

The producer had an assistant and a researcher, ‘make-up’ was on site, and then there was Will himself.

A Regional news reporter only a few weeks earlier, he was used to filming with two or three people on the crew. There were nine on the crew he was
now working with.

It was all about the technology. A film camera meant the need for lighting, it was dusk so they would also need an assistant to ensure cables were
tidily kept safe – the road was too nearby hence the need for sound – and so on.

Today, at a push, Will can get a similar filmic look and sound from a DSLR Canon 5d  EOS Mark 3 or 4 camera. It is a ‘still’ camera which takes [ .mov ] videos and can be set-up to record sound externally with use of a Tascam or similar. The camera settings now allow for 25 frames per second shooting and the range of prime lenses available to be used on the camera can create a gorgeous ‘film’ image.

A DSLR cannot replace a top quality camera used in TV or Film, but the quality has now become so good, it is a useful 2nd or ‘B-roll’ camera and is
so small it can be transported easily so becomes very user-friendly when on location.

It isn’t bad news for the technical crew either – it simply means more creatives can do things more creatively and at a price many can afford.

Charmed, I’m Sure

They’re some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Yet they’ve loved some of the worst people you can imagine.

How could anyone love a serial killer?

Truth is, it could happen to almost anyone. Through my work as the American Producer on Season Two of “Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer”,
I’ve come to know some of them, including Amy.

She was just 18 when she met Tony, a smart and charming, talented musician.  He wooed her and eventually wed her. They were together for five years, living a seemingly normal life in a normal middle class neighbourhood. They were the couple next-door.

But Tony had a secret habit that was anything but normal. He liked to hunt, rape, and murder little girls. Amy had no idea she was married to a monster, cleverly disguised as Mr. Charming.

Then the monster began coming home.

Slipping drugs into her drinks and having his way with her while she was unconscious. More than once, she awoke with his hands around her neck.
One night, he stopped just short of killing her.

She left him the next day.

Four years after the divorce, Tony’s secret killing spree became front page news. He was convicted and sentenced to die for what he’d done to five young girls. Police suspect, and he has hinted, there were many more. We’ll never really know.

It had all happened right under Amy’s nose.  She had loved him…or the man she thought she knew.

Now, 15 years later, she has put away the past. He’s gone now, from this life and hers. She’s a wife and mother, a successful businesswoman, and you’d really like her if you met her.

But you won’t, not in our story.

We’re not going to risk her harm by outing her now, because she was a victim. She is a survivor.  And she’s one of the nicest people you’d ever want
to meet.