The Ethics of the Truth

As I mentioned in my last post I'm a little uncomfortable talking about true crime cases. There are myriad issues when discussing true crime since these cases deal with real people and so they can have far-reaching effects. Not just on the perpetrator, but on their victims, the victim's families, even the perpetrator's families.

As I've said, it makes me uncomfortable when true crime commentators talk about criminals like monsters who should be locked up forever. But, my issue is not just about opinions - after all, a simple "the opinions within are my own" disclaimer is all you need there... no, my issue is the way we present the facts in these cases. But, that seems odd doesn't it? After all, we're talking about facts and truth, right? Sure, facts can be inaccurate, but if everything is presented as honestly as possible what's the problem with sharing the truth? Well, that's what I want to talk about.

Honesty is a Virtue, I believe that wholeheartedly. It's important not to lie or cheat. However, when it comes to honesty a lot of people make the mistake of believing that honesty is the same thing as telling the truth. But this isn't the case. For one of my favourite examples, because I find it quite funny, there are occasionally signs you see reporting common crimes in an area: "vandalism banned in this area", "diving off this bridge is prohibited", "bags have been stolen in this area", that kind of thing...
But on such signs they usually end with the phrase "if you have any information, please call this number", and the number for security or management or whatever. It always makes me chuckle, because I think it would be funny to call them up and say "Lima is the capital of Peru", or "Sharks have two penises", or whatever other fun fact comes to mind. After all, it's information! They asked if I have any information, and I do, I know a lot of information.

Obviously, I wouldn't actually waste anyone's time like that, but the point is that everything I said is "information", it's all true. They really should say "if you have any relevant information". I still think it's funny because I'm a pedant like that, but even though they don't write "relevant information", we all know they don't have to... because it's already commonly understood etiquette. You don't tell everyone everything that you know to be true. If you did, every conversation would take months.

So, we don't need to tell everyone everything, but what if they ask you, specifically? What if you know the answer to a question, but choose not to answer, that's lying, right? 

I don't think so. To me, honesty isn't about telling the truth it's about not trying to trick someone, or mislead them. If someone asks you something that you don't want to tell them, you don't need to lie, but you don't need to tell them the truth either. Obviously, if you let them you believe that you didn't know, that's a form of dishonesty, but that's solved by answering with a simpler truth:
"I'm not going to tell you that", "I'm afraid that's a secret", "it's not my story to tell", "I'm not at liberty to say", or in some cases even "that's a personal question, and I'm insulted you'd even ask!"
You're not lying, you're being clear that you have the answer, but you're not going to give it to you.

[Editor's Note: We'll leave discussions of coercion and force for later, but there's no ethical issues in dishonesty for your own safety. It's a sad but common fact that sexual and religious minorities, even majority-passing ethnic minorities, often lie to protect themselves from persecution and I see no issue there, but we're talking more about the basics of honesty and ethics, in this instance.]

But, if we don't have to tell the whole truth, then that means that we are making a choice regarding what we choose to share - which truths we choose to tell. It's not usually a huge drama, in every conversation you decide on stuff that's relevant, or something you think friends will find funny or amusing. That said, even in a simple conversation amongst friends, you will choose what you won't talk about. You're deciding which truths a person should hear, and that's not even 'censorship', so much as a pragmatic decision to use one's time more effectively. But, even that has its inherent bias. You're more likely to talk to friends about that wild night of drugs than, say, your parents. You're less likely to tell that dirty joke to your kids than, for instance, your partner. That's alright, since you're presenting yourself as you want to be seen, that's alright... but it would be less alright if you did it for someone else. And, we do occasionally do that. Especially if you don't like someone, you may be inclined to tell people about the nasty things you've seen them do or heard them say.
That's obviously not nice, but it's not exactly honest... I'm not saying it's "wrong" to spread gossip, but just as we pick and choose how we present ourselves, we also pick and choose how we present others. If you're talking about how much of an arsehole your boss is, you're more likely to talk about how much work they expect of you, as opposed to them buying you present for Christmas, just to keep your story straight. It's not exactly lying, but it's dishonest in a way, since it can unfairly present a person if you refuse to acknowledge other, relevant information.

So, how does this relate to True Crime? Well... even if we just look at homicide, according to the World Health Organization, in the year 2019, there were approximately 475,000 murders across the globe. In just one year. That's over 1,000 a day, it's almost one every minute. We can't talk about every single one, especially considering that true crime can include violent crimes with survivors, kidnapping, torture...
But, we don't, do we? True Crime doesn't simply discuss every single crime there is. People pick and choose particular crimes, the ones that resonate with them. This bothers me for two reasons.

Firstly, it has the potential to misrepresent the reality of what crime is. Like, for example, True Crime tends to have a few "subgenres": There's Historical Crimes; Missing Persons cases can be their own beast; Serial Killers is a big one; White-Collar Crimes have their own style, often focusing on the legal system; there's also Wrongful Convictions; & of course Unsolved Mysteries just to name a few.

But, as diverse as this is, this diversity doesn't actually represent crime accurately.

Do you know how many crimes go 'unsolved' every year? Most of them. In America in 2022, 63% of reported crimes haven't had a conviction, almost two-thirds went unsolved. Yet, "Unsolved Mysteries" only represents a minority of the True Crime spectrum. And, if you don't follow that particular genre, the majority of cases you hear about will be solved, because these are stories with a beginning, a middle and an end, and if you don't catch the killer, the story doesn't have an ending.

But even if you realize that fact, you may be more fascinated by the goriest, the rawest, and the more disturbing cases. In that case, as I alluded to in my last post, I believe that's what leads people to believing that the solution is a larger and more powerful police force, a less forgiving prison system and a greater reliance upon the death penalty. On My Favourite Murder, "just lock them away" and "why'd them let them out?" are common refrains, despite the fact that the police force is not always a force for justice, let alone a force for law or effective crime control, and when police are given more power, they usually start by locking up even more minorities. But, if your experience of crime is the "worst of the worst", then it makes sense that you'd think cops need all the help they can get.

It's actually a study that I'm very familiar with, narratology. See, we use stories all the time, human brains are satisfied by stories, because they're neat. They package everything up nice and tidy. There's a beginning, a middle and an end, there's a message in there, a hero and a villain. The problem is that life isn't tidy. Some stories aren't neat, so when we package up stories for a general audience, we often sand off the edges. Crime stories come pre-packaged with a villain, the criminal, so by the fundamentals of story-telling, the ones stopping them (the cops) become the heroes. In an odd (but in my eyes undeniable) kind of way, most true crime is a form of copaganda, pro-police propaganda that spreads the false narrative that cops are always a force for good, and they can do no wrong.

Secondly... (yeah, this was a list of two things, but that last item went long so let me remind you), the other reason why true crime bothers me is the way that it tacitly objectifies real people. I don't think that people "own" true stories - in fact, the News exists purely because people can't claim ownership of the truth... it's actually a modern issue with the news that because investigative journalism costs money, a lot of news programs instead choose to aggregate and regurgitate news from other news sources, turning the news media into one grand ouroboros that's constantly feeding off itself.
Anyway... the point is that even if something happens to you, you don't own that story, and that's understandable. However, what's less understandable is that even though it's your story - and it's about you - you lose all control of your story. It's something I came to understand after reading the fascinating novel An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire. Whilst it's a fictional story, it's about a regular woman, who loses her sister in an isolated incident of murder, but her grief is exacerbated when the media starts intruding into her life, questioning her, suspecting her and her friends, and even starts using her sister as a symbol of domestic violence. It's a fascinating story, but it brings up a very clear point. Even though this is her sister, her family, thousands of people claim this murder for themselves. They decide that this story is their story, monopolizing on their own grief, whilst ignoring the real victim who is refused the chance to move on from her grief because even her own memory of her sister is being twisted by the media. It's fictional, but there's a lot of truth there. For me, the most affecting chapter was when a group of feminists organizes a protest in the dead woman's honour, and starts parading around with her name and face plastered on their protest signs. The main character desperately calls up the journalists she's spoken to, asking if she can stop it. She's against domestic violence she just doesn't want her sister to become some martyr to a political cause, but the journalists tell her that she doesn't have the authority to stop a protest, it's their decision, all she can do is give them a quote... but she realizes she can't risk that since the story is so big she either has to endorse it or be villainized in the press for being against it.

The point is, whilst she doesn't own the story, people are still telling her story for her. She doesn't even want to tell her story, she wants people to leave her and her family alone, but she's denied that because someone decided that this crime was a story worth telling. Someone decided that this story belongs to Australia.

Y'know, it's thankfully died down now, but there used to be a lot of talk about cultural appropriation, taking something from another culture. Now, cultural appropriation doesn't actually exist, it can't, because cultures don't own things, culture is inherently memetic, it's not "property". However, when people talk about cultural appropriation, the actual cause of concern isn't theft, or appropriation, it's objectification. It's treating a culture as an object, to be used. But culture comes from people, by nature it's subjective, it's experience, it's history... by objectifying a culture, you dehumanize it and commodify it.
The same is true of stories. Nobody can own stories, especially true stories. However, as much as we wish we could consider true stories, such as true crime, like a narrative with characters and plot points and story structure, but that objectifies and commodifies a real tragedy.

You can share a true crime story, that's not inherently dishonest or even immoral, but it requires a deft hand because no matter how much it feels like a story, it's not a story it's the truth. The truth can be messy, it can be incomplete, it can be biased, and it may not always tell you everything. But more than anything, I think it's important to ask ourselves, is this my story to tell?

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I guess I did end up talking a bit about the ethics of storytelling after all, but this was just a small part of it, I'll probably work on a much larger discussion in the future. For now, I hope you've enjoyed this, the last post of the second-last Halloween Countdown of this blog.
I wish you all a safe and fun Halloween tomorrow and until next time--if you're going to share a horror story this Halloween, make sure it's a good one.