Uncover - The ethical true crime podcast: How to make one, what not to do

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

Rebecca Lavoie, host of Crime Writers On..., speaks with four distinguished podcasters who work with true crime: Justin Ling, host of Uncover: The Village, Connie Walker, host of Missing & Murdered, Natalie Jablonski, producer on In The Dark, and Amber Hunt, host of Accused. They break down the ethics behind true crime podcasts, what good podcasts should work to achieve, and what to take into consideration when dealing with stories that affect real lives. This bonus episode was recorded in front of a live audience at Podcast Movement.

I am going to tell you a story that a powerful state doesn't want you to know about tens of thousands who have disappeared. Once they get into the hands of the military, they will be tortured brutally. It's a story so dangerous to tell that for some it's meant ending up on a kill list. She was seen as a dangerous political actor and a threat to Pakistan's security, but she was a local hero. The Kill List, a six-part investigative podcast. Available now.

Get early access to episodes at cbc.ca slash listen or by subscribing to the CBC True Crime Premium channel on Apple Podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming to our panel in the Ethical True Crime Podcast, How to Make One, What Not to Do. My name is Rebecca Lavoie.

I'm the host of a show called Crime Writers On, on which we talk a whole lot about what true crime podcasts should do and shouldn't do. And when I was asked to do this panel, I was kind of given the choice of what kind of podcasters like who would be on your dream panel to talk this through and I actually succeeded in getting all four of the people that I wanted to talk to. So to kick it off I'd love to go down the line could you introduce yourself what is your podcast and just tell us a little bit about it.

Sure my name is Connie Walker I'm host of Missing and Murdered. The last season was called Finding Cleo. And it's a podcast that focuses on the unsolved cases of missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls, primarily in Canada. My name is Natalie Jablonski and I'm a producer on the In the Dark podcast. It's an investigative podcast and our most recent season looked at the story of Curtis Flowers, a black man in Mississippi on death row who's been tried six times for the same crime. My name is Justin Ling. I'm the host of season three of Uncover with the CBC. It's called The Village. Our season looked at a serial killer who was arrested for targeting gay men in Toronto's gay village. But we use that as a lens to go back to a raft of unsolved cold cases from the 1970s and 1980s

and sort of talk about the kind of cultural significance of that and the environment in which those happened and ask the question about whether or not he potentially had a hand in any of those murders. My name is Amber Hunt. I host Accused. I'm a journalist, have been for 22 years, and never set out to make a podcast, but found that it was a really great way to tell a long-form story about a cold case. And so now we are working on our third season. One of the questions I had for all four of you, I mean, you all work in journalism. None of you makes a podcast that's just talking about cases. You report out the stories. You do the interviews. You travel to get tape. You actually uncover what happened, what didn't happen in the

case of In the Dark. You do data reporting. We should mention your podcast, the case that you reported on in your second season, made it all the way to the Supreme Court and happen in the case of In the Dark? You do data reporting. We should mention your podcast. The case that you reported on in your second season made it all the way to the Supreme Court and resulted in the overturning of a conviction. Kind of a big deal. How do you decide which stories to report? How did you choose the Curtis Flowers case? Yeah, I mean, in the case of the Curtis Flowers story, that was a tip that came from a listener. So we got hundreds of tips at the end of our first season, and we read all of them. And this one just really stood out to us, said there's this man in Mississippi who tried six times for the same crime.

And that immediately kind of jumps out as like, what? How can that be? But also, I think a key for us is not just that there's a compelling story at the center, but also that it tells like a bigger story. And in this case, it was the story of like the power of prosecutors in the US, and how that is like relevant, not just for Curtis Flowers, but also potentially for anyone involved in the justice system. So there's also sometimes some interest in a community that you are a part of or not a part of and wanting to look at something. Connie and Justin, I know you both reported stories for the CBC

where you identify yourself in the podcast as relating to the community, being a part of the community. How do you draw that line when you're telling stories about your people you draw that line when you're telling stories about your people and, you know, working with sources and, you know, getting to the objective journalistic truth while also, you know, not necessarily being a part of the story, but really having a deeper understanding of it than a reader or listener? Mike, I'm going to start with you, Connie. Sure. I think it's a huge asset, actually, for this kind of reporting. And I think that in particular with the Indigenous community in Canada and the United States,

it's a community that's been so underrepresented in media and misrepresented. And so when you think about reporting in Indigenous communities, I think that you have to think about all the stereotypes that people have about who we are and what's important. And I think that because I come from that community, because I have that experience, because I have personal connections to the issues that I'm reporting on, then I feel like that actually gives me the tools I need to help connect the dots in a more meaningful way to help people understand what the truth is. And the thing that I like about podcasting so much is that, you know, I've been a journalist also for 20 years, primarily in television, but the kind of journalist that is like Connie Walker, CBC News, Toronto or whatever. Right. And I love podcasting because you actually can bring yourself

in your true self to the story in a way that feels natural. And it really, I think, in this era of, you know, people questioning whether or not they can trust journalists or journalism, gives us an opportunity to kind of peel back the curtain on our process and tell the truth about how so much of journalism is actually subjective. And, you know, from the cases we choose, the people we interview, the questions we ask and i think that being upfront about that and being upfront about how you're making those decisions is actually trusting the listeners um and and giving them you know the information they need to be objective and to decide that for themselves in a way how would you answer that question justin

i'm gonna be a jerk and tell you I hate the question because nobody ever asks straight white men whether or not they're objective. That's why I asked the question. So I appreciate it because it's good to point, put it out there. I mean, nobody ever asks business journalists whether or not they have trouble being objective when they go out and party with their banker friends every night. Nobody ever asked small town reporters whether or not they're objective because they know all their neighbors, right? So I think it's only an asset. I mean, the fact that you know that community, the fact that you know who to call,

the fact that you don't need to have your hand held to figure out the intricacies and nuances of how the community operates, of their lingo, of their slang, of how they identify or how they talk to each other, like that is only an asset. Like I don't see liabilities there. I mean, obviously you still have to kind of run like a conflict of interest screen or, you know, you have to think about potential conflicts when you're talking to people that you may know or you have a relationship with.

That's a given. But that's a given in any type of reporting. Right. So I think it's only an asset. I mean, when dealing with when we were making The Village, you know, I had producers who weren't in the community. I had producers who weren't in the community. And so it was usually me trying to, you know, figure out where we had to find potential sources,

you know, how, you know, we treat certain issues, like whether it's HIV nondisclosure or whether, you know, it's sexual orientation or pronoun usage. But that's good. I mean, the fact that you don't have to do that extra amount of work to figure all that out, to bring someone else in to figure it out for you is an asset.

It saves you time. It makes the final product better and cleaner, and it removes a lot of the confusion around a lot of those questions. So I think it's only an asset. I'll say too, I think in the case of both of your podcasts, and this is the reason I asked the question, because I don't think it speaks to bias. I don't think it speaks to story choice. I think it speaks to an ability to go deeper and to sometimes push harder. You know, I listened to In the Dark, and one of the remarkable things about that podcast is you're all from Minnesota, went to live in a community that you don't belong in, you know, a lot of people there would say anyway, listening to the podcast and the work that you have to do

to engender trust with sources, to be able to push so hard and that people still feel like they can run away from you and not talk to you. It's an interesting balance there. I mean, I know that's also one that you think about Amber. I mean, your stories are both stories that you chose to cover for a reason. You came in somewhat from the outside of those stories and you had to learn to relate to them in your own way. You bring a lot of who you are into your journalism. Can you talk about that? Podcasting for me has been really interesting because of the curtain being lifted. But a big part for me is that when you're talking about subjectivity, every step in my career along the way has led to who I am today. And so the book that I wrote 10 years ago is helping, excuse me, to inform the question that I'm asking today.

And in a podcast, I can actually kind of explain that to you. When I mentioned that I took a polygraph, it was because of a story in 2000, you know? So for me, there's this cool mix of being able to like inject the experience that I've had without making it about me, but letting my experiences shape and inform the story that I'm trying to tell. Now, Natalie, you, both seasons of In the Dark were very dark and deep and tackled some really difficult subject matter. All of your podcasts really have. One of the things that In the Dark really, for me, makes it so extraordinary is that it is dry. I mean, I don't think that there's really, you can't point to anything about In the Dark and say like, this was a sexy, you know, for lack of a better term, like, oh shit moment

where they like dropped in this crazy music and made your like gut like fall out from underneath you. But it's also really entertaining and you want to listen to the next episode when you finish an episode. As a producer on the show, you know, doing very straight in-depth journalism and also understanding that to build audience and to get people to pay attention it has to be entertaining how do you guys talk about that on that team i think we want the structure of the story i mean we primarily want it to be driven by the journalism and like we have an actual question that we're setting out to answer at the beginning and we want that to kind of drive the whole narrative. And so we want

to have actual findings that we can use to like propel the story. I mean, so I think like a lot of it is just having that like journalistic core to be able to structure around that. But yeah, we definitely do think about certain moments that like we might want on tape. Like for example, with some of the data reporting, our data reporter, Will Craft, like we want him to tell Madeline his findings for the first time while we're recording. So that would be like an example of like, we got to think ahead about this. Like we want to make sure we have that, like preserve that kind of like little bit of surprise or that we like get that on tape. So yeah, I mean, we do definitely think about how to get some of those moments.

And you also, we were talking about it before this panel, episodes have to end in a place where you want to listen to the next one. And that can be challenging. Connie, your podcast talks about the mass kidnappings, basically, of indigenous children. It talks about how many of them were lost in the system abused in the system it talks about you know this legacy of of racism

and the squashing of a whole culture in your country and yet you have to make an episode that ends on a cliffhanger that makes somebody want to listen to the next one how do you guys talk about that on your team you know it's because the panel is about like ethical true crime. And I feel like what we've done is actually trick people into learning about Canadian history by saying, oh, we've got a really great mystery for you. Like, I mean, not that obviously that was the goal of the podcast is to try to help this family get answers about their sister but my goal as a journalist has been for 20 years is to help tell the truth about the lives and the realities that indigenous people live in Canada and for a really really long time there wasn't interest in those

stories I remember pitching my first story about a girl that I knew from back home who had gone missing when I was like an associate producer on a national current affairs show. And it was the same summer that a white woman had gone missing in Toronto who was blonde. And she was on the cover of the national newspapers and she was covered on the national news every night. And Amber, the girl who I knew from back home, barely got any local coverage. And I remember pitching a story that we examined why these two cases had gotten such different treatments in the media. And my boss at the time putting her hand up to stop me and say, this isn't another poor Indian story, is it? You know, so I

feel like for the first time in my career, there's like an opportunity to not just report on this really important issue, but to tell the bigger story about the truth about Canadian history that people don't know. But a way to engage people in that is really effective if you use the true crime thing, and if you use the mystery, because people are, the reality is they're just not going to stay engaged, right? If I asked you guys, are you interested in an eight-hour documentary about indigenous people in canada and canadian history some people might say yes but i don't think a lot of you would um but if you if you can like i feel like that's why i love podcasting and true crime podcasting in particular because it's such an effective way to entertain people but also deliver the. So there are a lot of true crime podcasts out

there. I talked earlier about the podcast that just talk about cases and don't do journalism, but there are also a lot of true crime podcasts out there that are trying to do journalism or playing at journalism or sometimes just bungling around and calling it journalism. And it's my turn. Yes. One of those things. And it's almost like there are these tropes that have come up in shows like that. One of them being like, let me show you how I did the work. So now I have to listen to 20 minutes of tape of me trying to make a phone call.

Or me arguing with somebody about something that isn't important, just so you can hear that I was there. That kind of stuff happens. Amber, you know, one of the things that I think is a huge misstep and really veering toward the really irresponsible that I hear in a lot of these shows is identifying potential suspects to crimes. People who have not been ever looked at by police or perhaps have, but their names have not been public. Can you just explain what those lines should be and how you've dealt with it on your show? Because especially in season one of Accused, you talk pretty deeply about alternative suspects in a crime in a way

that was responsible. And yet I think maybe people might not understand where that line is. Well, first off, we had meetings constantly to talk about the ethics of what we were about to do, because we had a in my season one, we had a gentleman who had been accused by prosecutors and police. He had been acquitted by a jury. They still believe that he did it. Nope. Jury got it wrong. This guy's guilty. Well, when we went through and re-investigated the case, we found three even identified people from back then that they should have looked at closer. So we needed to figure out a way to responsibly explain these three people and why they were at least as deserving as the accused, but not call them, I don't know, killers. Like that seemed like a bad idea. So we just had a lot of conversations about, okay, we're going to explain that these are the reasons that the person should be looked at. That does not mean that he is a killer. It just means that there were blinders put on to these people and what are the reasons for that.

So that's how we approached it. We made a point to never say or even let ourselves think that so-and-so killed our victim, but rather like this is the reason that person should have been looked at. If they hadn't been identified in the original investigative material, that would have been a more complicated discussion still. But the fact is we are dealing with somebody who was branded for 40 years a murderer by people in very powerful positions. So the least we can do is lay out reasons that maybe other paths should have been explored. Yeah. And just to jump on that, I mean, sometimes you're going to get a name of a suspect from somebody

or somebody who they believe may have been responsible, and you spend two or three or four months looking into them, establishing a case for why they may have done it, and then ultimately concluding you can't use any of it, which is incredibly frustrating. But that's the reality of it. That happened to us. We had a pair of homicides we looked at going back to 1978 and 1981. And basically, the suspect lists were never provided to us. We had a lot of commit another homicide of another gay man just a couple years later, and who was in the right

city at the right time. And the other one was a drug dealer who was openly talking about murdering our victim at a bar that night. And we spent a lot of time at both of them. We used one of their names. We didn't use the other because we didn't think it was strong enough to go with it. But it was a long, drawn out, back and forth. Do we use it? Don't we use it? What are the ethics behind it? One of them was still alive. One of them was dead. That helps. Yeah, being dead does help. For anyone in the room is wondering, you can't legally slander or libel a dead person. Doesn't mean you should say a dead person committed a murder. But the lines there are a little bit different. Yeah, I mean, it's difficult.

I mean, it's a tough balancing act. And I think that's what separates, you know, an ethical true crime or an augmented true crime podcast from one that's not, is that a lot of them don't think about this, right? Like, we have a name. It's our responsibility to say the name. Like, no, it's not. You know, there is not that rigor that goes behind that thought process and a

lot of these other podcasts right you're not a cop you're not a prosecutor um and you have to bring the goods if you're gonna do that natalie you guys um have an alternative suspect that you know the most recent episode of in the dark you have a guy that the police did look at but then didn't disclose that they looked at essentially willie j James Hemphill. And there's a incredible, if anyone has not heard the most recent episode of In the Dark, I would highly recommend it, confrontation with that suspect in a courthouse, which if anybody here is a budding journalist, is a wonderful place to try to talk to people because nobody can bring a weapon into a courthouse. There are a lot of law enforcement around and they have to be there at a specific time. So it is like a good setting. But how did you guys talk about that? Because I do think that

in the dark makes a decent case that he could have been the one who did it. So how did you guys talk about whether or not to sort of put that out there? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, yeah, again, something that we like talked about, like we put a lot of care into the decisions that we made. And, you know, when we first talked to this guy, Willie James Hemphill, he told us that he was a suspect. So that was like an important fact. And he described this whole encounter with law enforcement being in jail for several days, getting fingerprinted, having his shoes taken, and all these things that if he was telling the truth would have resulted in like some potential evidence that

was never disclosed to Curtis Flowers' defense, and that the juries, or all six juries, you know, for all six trials had never heard about. And so for us, the key was the fact that this stuff that sounded like it should exist hadn't been disclosed. And then later on, in the most recent episode, we kind of like went back to him because he had given us basically an alibi somewhere. He said that he was on the day of these murders that happened back in 1996. And so we later went to try and check that alibi with basically the person he said he was with, and she said he wasn't with me. And so at that point,

we felt like we needed to publish that fact, but we also needed to go back and bring that to him because we didn't want to just put it out there in the world that, oh, he said this, she said this. I guess it's not true. We have to sort of bring that finding back to him. You mean do the journalism. Yeah. And so that was, yeah, that was how we ended up there in the courthouse. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs.

We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. That guy on drugs is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

One of the criticisms from audiences around true crime stories and also from a critic like me is the handling of families of victims. And your stories all come at this in a different way because you're coming into the stories in a different way. I think Finding Cleo especially was very much a story in which it was told through in some ways and around the family of the victim. How do you negotiate those relationships and how do you draw lines so you are not just becoming, again, like an advocate and you're still staying in that journalistic role, but still making sure that the mission of your podcast, which I believe was to get answers for them, holds true. Yeah, those are very tricky relationships to even approach in a lot of ways, because often these are families that have experienced a lot of trauma, who obviously lost somebody, possibly violently. And so even approaching people to talk to them is something that we're really thoughtful about. Christine actually reached out to us after the first season of our podcast to ask us to help find her sister. So I feel like obviously they were willing and really eager to participate in the podcast. But there were so many times throughout the podcast,

many months of producing the podcast, where that was such a sensitive relationship. Because, you know, as much as it was a podcast to find out the truth about what happened to their sister, it was also an opportunity for them to find out the truth about what happened to them as children. And it was really uncovering a lot of things that they had experienced traumatic experiences that they had had as children and I think that you know I'm learning a lot about trauma-informed journalism and about how trauma impacts people as children but also throughout

their lives and that's something that I'm, it's an awesome responsibility to know that people have experienced trauma and have been affected by it. And that what you're doing, even if you have the best of intentions, could still be potentially harmful. And so I didn't go to journalism school. But I think that if I did, I still wouldn't have necessarily learned how to navigate those kinds of relationships because there were times like you know we found out the truth about how their sister died and then had to tell them that those kinds of things and how do you begin that kind of conversation and I'm really incredibly lucky to have had such an amazing reporting team that I have worked with really closely Jen Jen Fowler, actually,

who was a producer on Finding Cleo, was also a producer on The Village, and Marnie Luke, who's in the podcast, and Heather Evans, and Mika Anderson. So we had a lot of these conversations about how we should approach these relationships, but they become, they end up becoming very intense relationships, right? Like we were in touch with Cleo and her siblings, you know, daily, sometimes like weekly for months and months on end. And we're still in touch, you know, I mean, you become close to people and get to know them in a really intense way when you're doing this kind of investigative reporting. Yeah. It's funny. You said you didn't, I did go to journalism school briefly. I dropped out twice. I mean, I like dropping out so much I did it again. I remember this assignment so vividly. It was, I think, my first that i've talked to other older journalists and this was a very common practice and so people were going through the obituaries in the newspaper and call cold calling people who had lost a level one

days prior and subjecting them to a bunch of you know flat-footed ham-fisted questions and i ever's face right now everybody's face actually yeah i teach college that's that's a really shitty assignment it was i was so annoyed i interviewed my boyfriend at the time about his pet goldfish that had died and got a failing grade on it. And was never so happy and proud of a failing grade. But this is one thing that I think is lacking, not just from a lot of these startup crime podcasts, but also from a lot of reporting these days, but also from a lot of reporting these days, which is that there doesn't seem to be a sensitivity for the impact that these stories have on the friends and family of folks

who have been murdered or who have died. And they've not seemed to appreciate that it's no longer just a TV station and a newspaper calling them. It's now three newspapers, five online outlets, a thousand people on Facebook who've been following the story and feel like they have some right of answers

from these loved ones. I mean, in our case, one of the victims of Bruce MacArthur, the serial killer, people started going through his Facebook and started compiling evidence that he was in on it. And they started messaging and calling and emailing friends and family of this, this poor guy with, you know, probing questions about his responsibility for these murders. You know, I spoke at length, you know, I still talk frequently to a good friend of one of the victims who said she found, you know, amateur sleuths in her laundry room one day looking around for evidence. And so I think if you don't recognize that that is potentially a direct impact of the way in which you report these stories, then you're being irresponsible. Right. Sometimes, though, the family of the victims are wrong

about what happened. Actually, in our season two, we did not have cooperation with the victim's family because in that season, we were looking at a man whose conviction had been overturned, and they thought he did it. And so they just didn't reply to me when I was reaching out saying, hey, I want you to know that I'm working on this. I don't want you to be

surprised. That's my big thing. I don't want anyone to be surprised. Because you're a good person. Well, but I mean, once the story started coming out, one of the daughters was very upset, called me up, screamed at me, you know, swore at me. And I largely just kind of took it because I understand that she's been through a trauma that I can't comprehend. And if I could take that for her, then that's fine. I'm pretty sure she's wrong, though. I think she's probably wrong about his guilt. she's wrong though. I think she's probably wrong about his guilt. And the benefit of you,

unfortunately, making her go through that could be, you know, exonerating a man who was wrongfully convicted, right? You know, I think a lot of the times that calculation isn't done by people. They think the entertainment value of putting out the story is sufficient to subject people to this, and it's not. Yeah, for the record, I did not record. I mean, that was not a conversation I was going to record. Right. Well, I do think though, for the listener, the transparency around that is important, but I just want to like stay on this for a second because I do think, I mean, as somebody who's written several true crime books, the story of a murder or a wrongful conviction or of an unsolved case, it begins with a victim and their family and their trauma. And very often the response you'll get when you find some reason to report it, not just this is what happened and I want more people to know, the reason being

accountability for the power structure or an underreported story because it happened in a marginalized community. You have to make that decision. Does the idea of somebody feeling like you were opening an old wound outweigh the good you can do in telling the story? I honestly think there's almost no better example of this than in the dark because you have, in season two in particular,

I think the show and, and Madeline and your reporting team does a really outstanding job, not telling us that Curtis flower is innocent, but showing us why he very well might be. And also showing us what's in play for this community. A hundred percent believing he's guilty and what's in play for this community, 100% believing he's guilty. And what's in play is racism and this sort of a justice system built around white supremacy in the deep South. And you have people on tape saying those things. The people who have been hurt by this case, people whose family

members or friends are dead. Like, how did you guys talk about that in your room? Like, you have people who are hurting, who feel like something is being dug up that they don't you guys talk about that in in your in your room like you have people who are hurting who feel like something is being dug up that they don't want to talk about anymore but they're probably wrong like how do you talk about that in this story like we definitely had to sort of weigh the fact that like the story is sort of about this guy, Curtis Flowers on death row and what it's been like for his family. But at the same time, you have these four victims and their families who might not want the story to be dredged up again. You know, we still have to talk to them. Like we obviously can't do this story without making an attempt to talk to the

victim's families. And so we wanted to make sure to include them in the story. But yeah, it's tricky because you have these sort of two sides. So yeah, I mean, we just wanted to make sure that we included them, you know, because even though a big part of the story is about Curtis Flowers, we need to just make sure that we have the victim's families. And if the family is wrong, there hasn't been justice. And that is harming them as well, even if they don't know it. So that's something that you have to kind of keep in the back of your mind,

even though, you know, it feels a little weird to be like, well, it's kind of for your own good. But it is kind of for your own good, because if this isn't really what happened, then somebody else got away with this crime. And you don't have the answer that you think you have. And if I could just pump up how great your podcast is, it does this amazing job of taking an individual case and using it to shine light on systemic procedural issues. I mean, like you're talking about, like the inherent white supremacy of the American justice system,

essentially in the South, you know, without that case, it would be so hard to dehumanize all those issues. So I think it's absolutely valuable. And I think that's, again, you know, an element of the augmented or the ethical true crime genre is that it does speak to something larger and broader and systemic issues, whereas, you know, it's not just looking at one case for entertainment. And it's funny talking about, you know, tricking people into listening to your podcast. I mean, we did that to a large... Not tricking them, encouraging them. Oh, it's tricking. You know what?

I'm just going to be upfront. It's like, I have a guilty pleasure of reading the reviews of our podcast. And most of them are wonderful and great. And I don't actually dwell on the positive ones. I go down to the one-star reviews that say things like, I thought this would be a serial killer podcast. What's all of this gay stuff? And there's so much of that. And I'm like, yeah, we can-

You can inspire that listener. You don't need them. Well, but I actually do appreciate that. I bet there's a lot of people who tuned in, expecting more of an entertainment-based, you know, serial killer podcast, who ended up going down

this garden path of queer rights going back 40 years. And hopefully learning something significant about you know the origin of of you know that struggle and and sort of the problems that still linger today and I think we did that I have heard from a lot of people who appreciated that who appreciated being tricked to some degree yeah you get your vegetables with your ice cream now Connie one of the things that you do in your show, in both seasons of your show, that I love, because we talked a little bit about it earlier. There are some very scary things about being a journalist.

There is nothing scarier, at least in my experience, than knocking on somebody's door when you have difficult questions for them. Or in just trying to have a conversation with somebody who's not expecting it. And there is a protracted scene in your show where you're literally sitting in a van outside and we hear you saying like i don't want to do this i was really hoping he wasn't going to come home like secretly in my like heart of hearts i was like if he just doesn't come like we just we can just go back to the hotel and we can like have dinner and it'll be okay. Like, you know, like how late are we going to wait? Like, you know, and, but he did eventually come home. Do you hear, if you've ever heard a story that wasn't well-reported, the missteps that people make when they just think it's okay and they're not afraid? I mean, do you think that that sort of sense of fear is important in doing

it right and in doing it well? I don't profess to even say that I'm doing it well or right. You know, I mean, I feel like even the conversations around families, I feel like I struggle with these things all of the time. And for me, they're not black and white issues or it's so complicated. And I, yeah, I mean, I think that we're guided by this feeling of responsibility that we need to ask these questions of these people, because that is part of the journalism. And you have to do that if you're going to continue to report this story. But I feel like Marnie, like I like even in this second season when we're in front of Cleo's adopted mother's house and we're going to knock on her door. Cleo's adopted mother's house and we're going to go knock on her door. And that's another example of a family member who didn't want us to bring up these painful memories, which is completely valid. But I, like, I joke that Marnie was like, it was like, I was like, do you think we should do this?

I'm not sure. And we're having this conversation like for an hour in the car and, you know, she's being very supportive. But in the end, she's like kicking me out of the car door. Like you've got like you have to do it basically. No, those are very difficult things to do. And to be honest, I really dislike them. I did that in Florida once and we got kicked off of somebody's property and the police were called on us. But we had to be the people who asked the difficult questions because that's part of our job. but we had to be the people who asked the difficult questions because that's part of our job. And it's part of the journalism, but it's not something that I think I'll ever like or enjoy.

I don't know. Do you guys? I don't wake up in the morning and go, ambush day. No, I have to like psych myself up every single time. We call them unscheduled interviews at CBC. You know what? In the course of reporting this story, I spoke to a lot of people who were friends and family of these dead men who said that they were approached by other journalists who were questioning them as though they were the elected officials, like they were the town mayor.

Some journalists go into these interviews like they're accountability interviews, like they need to get something from this victim's friend or family member. And I think it's just like, you really have to think about how you're approaching these interviews. Like there has to be a level of care there so that you don't leave that person worse off than when you showed up, right? You still need to have, I think you have some duty of care to these people. And I think journalists who don't appreciate that are doing a real disservice. I mean, you also get more useful information. I mean, you get more flies with honey, I guess, if you're looking to catch flies. You know, I think you do better when you consider the impact this is having on them and speak to them, you know, with compassion and

empathy as opposed to going in there just to get your clipped and, you know, fucking off after that. Well, in the dark, you have some unscheduled interviews, which... Most of them. Yes. But which you... There are some situations where the right thing to do is let the person who is wrong just talk so that the audience can hear what it is they're saying. And then there are times where you do need to challenge what they're saying because your reporting says otherwise. That is kind of the hallmark of what happened with our friend Doug Evans, the district attorney in the dark. Talk about like, how do you get as a team, get Madeline to do that? I mean, because it's hard. That made me so uncomfortable listening to that. I mean, he's calling her a little lady.

He's, this has happened to you too. He's being completely condescending. He's telling you, saying things that aren't, you know, based on your reporting aren't true. And, but for the listener's sake and for the journalism's sake, she has to push. She has to ask, do you guys give her like a bowl of steroids before she goes in and do that? How do you guys handle that? I mean, she's amazing. She's just really good at this also um and I mean I've actually learned a lot from her about how to approach this kind of interview because I think it's really like I think we try to think of it as like not a confrontation like it's really just it's another interview it's another conversation and you're going there to genuinely ask questions like it's not necessarily it's not supposed to be a gotcha

moment. It's supposed to be like, well, what about this? And you don't make like, maybe they're going to have a great answer for that, that you haven't even thought about. So I think really like going into it with like a kind of open mind, not necessarily like, not as though you know what they're going to say. Um, and really just reacting in the, like listening know what they're going to say. And really just reacting in the, like listening to what they're actually saying and taking it as a conversation. Amber, have you ever made a big mistake, an ethical error in judgment

that you wish you could redo, undo? Maybe even after the reporting came out, have you ever thought, I could have handled that differently, we could have done that differently? Yeah, yeah. I would say how I approach people has changed since, not really since the podcast began, but since my reporting began. This idea that I

don't want to surprise people came after surprising some people and realizing like, I don't need to do that. And I needed to be more, like, there's this thing when you're a young journalist that you're insecure about what you're doing and you're trying to protect your story. But if you do that at the expense of letting your sources know precisely what you're reporting, then you might make a mistake, you know. So I've changed a lot of things. I think the biggest thing I've adopted is just trying to be as transparent as possible. I'm really mindful when I'm talking to somebody who is not an elected official. I walk them through the process. You know, this is

what's going to happen. It's going to come out on this day. You might get some people who bother you on social media. I just want you to be prepared for that, all that stuff. No, you can't read it in advance. No, you cannot read it in advance. Why do still ask that but i do i go through like especially with cleo's siblings i went through the podcast and each episode exactly what was going to happen because this is not like this is their life this is you know and this is their family story this is their actual these are really intense things so um and especially obviously because April had memory issues because she had years of electric shock therapy to deal with her bipolar depression.

But so we went, we actually like, we went through every part of the podcast so she would know exactly what was coming. And same with Christine and Johnny because I didn't want them to hear, like we had already told them what we had been uncovering as it was happening. But when they hear it all together with music, and it's made to, you know, sound a lot more dramatic than me being just on the phone with them saying,

you know, hello, or whatever. You know, I really wanted them to be prepared for that. I will say I did learn one thing that I won't do again from season one and that is trust the police. Oh yeah. Because to my face they were very much like yes we are into doing this we're you know and they're acting like they were wanting to be helpful and then two years later I'm almost three three years later'm like, so what the fuck's been done? Nothing. So I won't fall for that again. Yeah, we had we had a bit of that we had a we had sent a request into the police asking for a list of the cold cases they were reopening. We always were make our own list, but we kind of wanted to cross reference theirs and see which ones were open, which ones

were and we had set up a meeting and it kind of took quite a bit of time you know there was delays delays suddenly like you know one month turned into like three uh we finally get a date to go sit down with the head of the cold case team and we're all excited you know we're sitting in the in the office being like that's going to change the whole podcast once they give us all this information we get there we sit down in the and you know the police officer the head of the cold case team kind of goes oh yeah we can't we can't give you any names we can't give you a list of any of the cases we're reopening. No, we're not going to comment or confirm

whether or not any of those cases are open or closed. These are active investigations and we're not going to compromise them. It was so frustrating. I went outside and talked to my producer and I was like, I was so close to just ripping the paper out of his hand and running away and trying to read it myself.

But no, and we got back to the office and we went, oh God like we have nothing from that nothing whatsoever we have to just build the rest of it ourselves hey but that that's telling you know that they won't help that still informs your reporting uh we just have a minute or so left so i have a tough question for you guys it may not be tough if you were the executive producer of every true crime podcast that came out between now and forever, what is one thing you would tell your aspiring journalist or journalist or podcaster to never, ever do in their storytelling? Assume. So you have to report the shit out of everything.

And that means that you have to push back against your own assumptions and try to be mindful when you are pre-deciding something. Yeah, I mean, I actually I would tell them be very willing to just not do the show, like be very willing to just drop that case. If it's not important, if you don't think it's going to move the needle in any direction, if you are suddenly realizing you're going to cause a lot of pain without a lot of benefit, just don't do it. Just pick another story. There's so many stories out there that need attention. Maybe there doesn't have to be another JonBenet Ramsey podcast. Maybe. Natalie?

I would say try to have a question, a real question that you actually want to know the answer to. I would say that your point about how every crime, behind every crime is a family and a trauma and to be aware of that trauma and how it continues to impact the people who live those experiences. Well, this has been a dream for me. These are four big thumbs up podcasts.

If you listen to Crime Writers On, you know what that means. I can't thank you guys enough for having this conversation with me. And if anybody has any questions for anyone on the panel, I think we can just hang out for a few minutes, if that's okay, and chat. But thank you all for coming. And we really appreciate it. Thank all of you. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. you all for coming and we really appreciate it. Thank all of you. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. For more CBC original podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash original podcasts.