Catch Him if You Can
March came from nothing. Now, he’s the 1%. He made his fortune in oil and cryptocurrency. He’s sweet, handsome and charming. It’s hard to believe he’s still single. Only, it isn’t. Because March isn’t real. He’s a border-hopping Canadian con artist who’s tricked women and men out of over a million dollars. He thought he was untouchable, but now he’s messed with the wrong women. From Pink Moon Studio, this is Catch Him if You Can. The story of Marcel Vautour, his survivors' real time crusade to catch him, and the broken legal system that’s allowed him to get away for over 20 years – told in 7 parts. Written and produced by Emilia King and Maggie Reid. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @catchhimpod
Catch Him if You Can
Behind the Curtain
What does it take to tell a true crime story without turning someone’s pain into entertainment? Maggie and Emilia go behind the scenes of Catch Him If You Can to unpack the ethics, labour and pressure of making the series and the moments when doing what felt right meant working against their own interests.
Cold Open & Series Intro
SPEAKER_00We literally sat with 60 hours of audio and video interviews, if you remember, and we had to cut down just from that. We could have we could have asked people to rephrase things in a shorter, more concise way. We made our lives much more difficult by not doing that, but we didn't want to put words in their mouths. March O'Toore is the 1%. He made his fortune in oil and cryptocurrency. He's handsome, charming, and has a heart of gold. It's hard to believe he's still single, only it isn't. Because March isn't real. He's a serial grifter and romance con artist who's tricked women and men across Canada, the US, Vietnam, and the Czech Republic out of over a million dollars. And that's just what we know of. His trail of destruction has led to heartbreak, bankruptcies, foreclosures, and even PTSD. How could you not be a psychopath?
SPEAKER_01How could you ruin so many people's lives and not care and walk away like dark evil? Romance fraud, business fraud, investment fraud, medical fraud.
SPEAKER_02You know, they say a really good liar puts some boosts in there to make it easier and make the story more believable because he has conviction about that because it knows it's true. He goes by Marcel, he goes by Mark with an M-A-R-C and M-A-R-K.
SPEAKER_00He goes by Andre, he also goes by Dre. We know him to go by Andy, we know him to go by Martin. We know him to go by Mark. I think he has a character that he's built for each one of them. He doesn't work. This is his job. He is good at what he does. And you know what? Problem. You're good at what you do. But we're we're good at what we do too. And we're gonna get in.
Behind the Curtain
SPEAKER_01Hello everyone, and welcome back to Catch Him If You Can, the bonus episode. The bonus episodes. We're back. Uh this episode is brought to you by the unpaid labor of trying to make ethical true crime. Because apparently, ethics are not a valid production expense. Shocking. Oh shocking. We found out. Not on the list. We are calling this episode Behind the Curtain. And for anyone new to the story, I'm Maggie Reed. This is Amelia King. Hey, hey. We are the creators behind Catch Em If You Can. Our investigative podcast followed the deceits of Marcel André Vautour. We worked with many of his victims to bring their stories to light and, you know, inform people of his kind of 25-year career as a con man. And look at some of the problems in the legal system and how he's been able to kind of evade justice for so long. And so we're back for these three bonus episodes in light of the fact that the podcast was actually turned into a docuseries. Yes, it was. It's turned into a docuseries. It's called Fool Me Once Hunting Marcel Vautour. It just premiered on Crave. We can't really talk about the series, no spoilers, but go watch it. So we're back for three bonus episodes. We want to talk about today the ethics of true crime. Why we wanted to make something ethical in a genre that is often unethical, is often rife with sensationalism, exploitation of victims, all that kind of stuff. Why we wanted to do that and what that looked like behind the scenes, how we were able to make it and what that cost us. We also want to look at how true crime often portrays victims. Or sorry, I would say media portrays victims of true crime, including why people are so quick to judge victims. I think in a lot of these stories, like I would never do that, right? To blame them, yeah. To blame them, yeah. And I feel like we're focused more on that than on the person doing the deception. So, like, why is that? We want to dig into it. And we want to look at how reporting about our particular case, about Marcel and about the victims, changed from when we started to after we did the podcast. Uh finally, we want to catch up a little bit on what's happened since uh the podcast came out, look at other cases with troubling similarities to our case, and ask kind of why many of these people who commit these types of crimes are so often able to just continue to do it again and again. So, maybe before we dig in a little bit, uh we can talk about how we kind of sold the show, maybe. It was a very long journey. Maybe take us through a little bit of like what was happening surrounding the podcast, like maybe from when we first started it to selling the show. I mean that's a long ass. Exactly, like five hours. Yeah, give me like the hot take, like like the hot take.
From Lockdown Investigation to Docuseries
SPEAKER_00Okay, the version take a version. Yeah, so I mean TikTok video. The tick to oh my no pressure. Okay, no pressure, no pressure. Basically, if you think about it, it's been six fucking years. Right? It's been six years from when we started this to now, to when it's coming out as docuseries. It was COVID. It was the year 2020, and we were all in lockdown. And you know, we were I was a huge fan of true crime. Like I was I'm always interested in that space. The docuseries, um especially the ones that really dig deep, right? So anyway, we we were looking for a case. We were looking for something to kind of dig our sink our teeth into, is I think the expression people use. Yeah, like vampires. Yeah, they're vampires, exactly. We're vampires, so we found a case to sink our teeth into. Yeah. And basically, yeah, we we you know, we saw an article, long story short, we contacted the women at the center of this story, and we started working away, like almost from right off the bat. Um, and because, I mean, most of you probably don't know, we are a video production company. Our um, our third partner, Evan, who's behind the camera. Hey Evan! He is he's a cinematographer. So we we always had that capacity, and we right from the beginning were capturing of these interviews in video form. So a lot of what you hear on the podcast is actually the audio stripped from the video doc sorry, the video documentary kind of part of it. So we always knew we wanted this to become something uh that has an even larger potential reach than the podcast would, right? Right. And we wanted, we wanted to use the podcast format to kind of really get into the story. And there are different ways of telling the story too, right? So, anyways, so long story short, we ended up creating a teaser from that content that we captured, and then we started pitching it, and we pitched everyone and their mother.
Pitching the Story: “Too Canadian” & “Too Risky”
SPEAKER_01This we did this has been around, the story has been around, and we were we were in rooms where we felt like we had no business like pitching the heads of networks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what's that? That was interesting. And we were so close so many times. Like we we had uh we had signed uh like basically a year-long optioning agreement. Um we were almost there, and then at the end of the line, the streamer at the time said, too Canadian, right? That's we we heard that a bunch of times, or too risky, because there was no um it was not a solved case.
SPEAKER_01It was not a solved case, too Canadian. So like did you did you feel like hearing that a lot, did you start to like lose hope? Because I feel like you were always our cheerleader, like you were always the one that was like, This is getting made, this is getting made. And I feel like I was like, I believed, but I was definitely starting to lose hope at a certain point. But I feel like you were you were, you know.
SPEAKER_00I lost hope too. Like if you remember, that last time. You faked it well. Yeah, well, remember, like we were so close, and then we got the no, the final no, and then we well, basically you and I, I don't know if it was a four-stop, but we we both had babies around that time, our second babies, because the first babies were made in the first season, which was the first babies were made in the first season. But yeah, anyways, so I don't know if it was a four-stop, but there was that period where like we just we we kind of put it aside for a little while and then we brought it back. Yes. But I always yeah, I always had hope because for me, like I knew this is a a big little story or a little big story where it comes alive in the details, and if we had people who could appreciate those details and those twists and turns, yeah, the story's huge. There this this story is not about the money. Yeah, yeah, there's a million dollars on the table, let's say cumulatively or more, right, that we can even keep track of. Yeah, but it's not about ten million dollars or something like that. It's it's the ways that he does it, like on a daily basis, and really, really manipulates people, right? That's the heartbreak. That's the story, and how these women triumphed over that, right?
Selling the Show
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right? Okay, so then we do eventually sell it.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Eventually. Eventually, yeah. Which was a long ass journey in and of itself, like once from to even get to green light.
SPEAKER_01So, like long-ass journey, and I feel like it we went from being kind of the creators who had like a ton of control. All the control. All the control. Um, and then it moved into this larger production pipeline where now it's like TV, you've got networks involved. Um, and I so I think it just this whole process of like it going from podcast to TV has made us think a lot about where we started.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and we've learned a lot about creative
What Does Ethical True Crime Take?
SPEAKER_00control.
SPEAKER_01We've learned a lot about creative control, we've learned a lot about ethics, and and kind of like I think what our values are too. Yeah. And so I think you know, seeing the podcast kind of travel this far brought us back to what we want to talk about today in this episode, which is really looking at something that was so important to us from the beginning, and I think was so important to us throughout this whole process, which is really the kind of the ethics of it all. Right? What does it take to make peace true crime, right? Without treating people's lives just as content, as something to exploit. And then also like who ends up paying for that because it's a lot of work. Yeah, it's a lot of work to be ethical, and a lot of people don't always see that. So the kind of peak behind the curtain of it all. And I mean, for our listeners, like obviously you heard kind of a final polished story, um, and not really all that went into the making of this show at the time. Amelia and I are both uh also professors and researchers, as well as content creators, storytellers. If you don't like the word content, I find it kind of gross. But when we decided to make something in this genre, um, we really cared about ethics, we cared about consent. Uh, we talked a lot about that in the beginning. We care we cared about avoiding some of the pitfalls of the genre where there's a lot of sensationalism, as I mentioned, exploiting people for profit, right? Like a lot of that happens here, and we wanted to try and avoid that. And, you know, when when I say we wanted to make something ethical, I don't mean that like every choice we made was perfect, right? Um, but ethics was very much grounded in how we made the show and how we worked with the people who were involved. Um and for us, a big part of that, um, of how we looked at like ethical or responsible storytelling or reporting was that we didn't ever want to pretend to be this kind of fly on the wall, right? Like this complete neutrality that you sometimes hear. Because stuff doesn't exist, right? That's well, it doesn't exist. Like there's kind of this old this notion of like old guard journalism where like you're supposed to be objective. Um, you know, you just give people the information that is factual so they can kind of make up their own minds. And I think we both agree that that's like never existed. But the facts are facting and they point in a certain direction.
SPEAKER_00Facts are facting. Why would we deny it, right?
Why Storytelling Isn’t Neutral
SPEAKER_01Well, and like you're always choosing what stories to cover, right? What stories not to cover, right? Whose voices to include, whose voices that you exclude, and what voices get more prominence. Like you're always making choices and like how all that information is put together. So I don't think storytelling is a neutral activity, even though I think we both think that you have to be factual. And that's really important to us as a part of our values. But like, um, it always reminds me of this line that's often attributed to this professor Jonathan Foster, which I don't know if he actually said it. That's kind of just but the line is if someone tells you it's raining and another tells you it's dry, it's not your job to quote them both. It's your job to look out the fucking window to find out which one is true. Okay, I love that. Right? Yes, yes. Yeah, it's like it's not your job to be like, here's some things, like figure it out. It's like, no, what is the truth actually pointing to? And so where were the facts pointing us to in this story? Well, I think that they were pointing us to a lot of systemic problems um with how these cases are treated, right? We didn't have to pretend, and I don't think we wanted to pretend that we didn't see that as a problem. No, right?
SPEAKER_00No, no, no,
Exposing the Systemic Failures
SPEAKER_00no.
SPEAKER_01Um, some of the patterns that we saw were like not listening to victims, right? Totally, not treating them seriously.
SPEAKER_00Looking at cases in isolation, like no jurisdictional uh support or connections or collaboration.
SPEAKER_01Totally. And so, like, we didn't want to just say, like, here's what's happening. We also like the focus was exposing some of those things, right? And a lot of the victims that we were talking about too were women, um, newcomers, people who had English as a second language, uh, a lot of people who already had vulnerabilities. Totally, yeah. Right, where they're not, you know, necessarily feeling the most confident even reporting these cases. And so, like, we wanted to both explore some of those problems, but also call for change within the system. Um, everything from the treatment of victims to how warrants are issued, um, to even things we talked about, like rape by deception, which is like this kind of anyway, um a way in which people who get into these romance relationships might be, you know, legally prosecuted. And we weren't really neutral about those kind of failures. Like we had a position on them. Yeah. Yeah. And we didn't hide that position. No, I would say. No. Right? Um, but that doesn't mean that we would make claims that the evidence didn't support. Um, we still had to make sure that we were verifying information, that we were like accountable for what we said. And we also wanted to make sure that we treated the victims with respect and you know, make sure that we told the story kind of ethically, right? Um, so maybe like if you could describe how we were approaching ethical true crime, like how would you describe it or like characterize how we were approaching
Entertainment, Ethics & Verifying the Evidence
SPEAKER_01it?
SPEAKER_00I I think it's a great question. And it's like you and I and Evan, like we we always wanted to make an entertaining show. Like that's true. We want to make because you know what? It's like the my line by a famous professor who I don't know said you always serve the broccoli with a little bit of cheesy sauce. Right? Right. But basically, we can't just give you facts until it has to be entertaining. It has to draw you in. People listen better when they actually are uh engaged and entertained by whatever it is that we're doing. So we knew, okay, yes, that that is something that we wanted to do, but ethics were kind of our guiding light, right? So ethical true crime, what did it mean for us? It meant not going for, let's say, necessarily the most scandalized version of what we would be doing, right? Of what we could be doing just because it was that version. Or um I always think about and verification, like you we had such a high bar for considering something verified. We always had to have two sources corroborating, right, for something to be then shared in the podcast. We recorded like 60 hours of interviews before and collected what thousands of pages probably at this point of documentation and looked at it all before we came up with the season storyline and the timeline and the structure. That remember how long that took us?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it took so long. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Oh, interesting. So like the real time getting information and then just putting it out there versus like actually really taking stock, taking the time to make sure things are correct and that there's not. And I think too, like we would even, because it was an active case, we would even get new information and have to make evidence all the time. But okay, that's interesting. So, like, okay, so like evidence obviously super important. I think we also thought about being really accountable to the people whose lives we were obviously portraying. And then the other thing I think that we thought about and like ultimately confronted is that we had to be willing to, and I think we were willing to give up a more dramatic version of the story if it would cause undue harm to the victims.
SPEAKER_00I agree. Yeah, we I think we definitely did that. Yep.
SPEAKER_01And I think doing all of this stuff and and approaching it with ethics was a lot more, there's a lot happening behind the scenes, right? That people wouldn't really hear about in the final product. And like maybe we could talk a little bit about what some of those things were that we were doing behind the scenes.
The Group Chat & Behind-the-Scenes Work
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. I mean, the group chat, right? The group chat, yeah. The group chat is when so many discoveries happened. Oh my god, yes. We shared so much evidence in this group chat with between ourselves and the and the ladies and text messages just all the time. Like, I I think I mean it would be midnight. Calls, calls, call message, it doesn't matter the time. Yeah. And that was that that's been the case for the entirety of basically the six years. Yeah. New information, drop everything. Oh, I was yeah, for sure. Like I was in the hospital with my mom, right? And all of a sudden something happened. I'm like, well, I happen to be close to a police station. Let me friggin' run down there. Let me just drop into the car. Yeah, exactly. Oh my god. It was wild. It was wild. But we felt such a heavy sense of responsibility, is basically what we're
Consent, Privacy & Ongoing Relationships
SPEAKER_00saying.
SPEAKER_01We did. And I think we also wanted to make sure that people who were participating understood how we planned to use their experiences, like how and include them. Right. Because so often this can be very exploitative, and a lot of the victims are already used to people to getting burned in a way. Yeah, we're all victims of trauma, basically, right? Yeah. And so I think that was important. I think we also stayed in contact with people. Like, I don't I think there is probably rare, maybe zero instance instances where we had a one-off interview with someone and didn't talk to them again. No, I don'tgoing relationships because you know, these are people, they have experienced something that is horrible. And you know, we didn't we didn't see this as just like, okay, taking your story. We saw it as an ongoing thing where we had almost like a common goal in a way.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, yes, exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_01And so I feel yeah. Um, and I think, you know, we also had to think about things like privacy and you know, some people didn't want their identity shown, things like that. You know, I think a lot of the fact checking and establishing what we could prove was also a lot of time and effort.
SPEAKER_00I would say, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like think about going through all of those documents.
SPEAKER_00We drove to Quebec. That dossier that like hundreds of pages of text messages and and documents from Marjorie, for example. Checks, everything, the money stuff, all of it. Yeah, courses, right? Right. All of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I think I mean all of that obviously took so much time to do. And I think a lot of the ethical choices we made were grounded in like how we wanted to approach the podcast and the investigation. Um, but they weren't like always dramatic sweeping decisions. They were kind of embedded in smaller decisions we made in shaping the story. Where I think we tried to give the people participating and you know, who were sharing their stories a lot of agency.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we well, right? We we kind of all operated with unified goals. Yes. Sort of, right? Yeah, we all had like goals that met somewhere.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00In the middle. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Can you think about moments where like specific moments where we tried to work ethically, where that changed an episode? That actually changed anything.
Changing an Episode After Participant Feedback
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. I remember one of our participants didn't like the way one of the fictionalized scenes sort of went down or was the way that they were portrayed or a part of the story. And so what did we do? We ended up after the fact re-releasing the episode with that small teeny edit. And nobody else would would think what that participant had felt. I don't think anybody would have felt that way about you know the scene. Yeah. But we knew that they felt strongly about it, and so we made that change. You remember that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think it's that took a lot of time. I mean, that takes a lot of time. Well, it takes it takes time, but I think it's it's one of those things where I think the way that we approach it is like, again, yes, obviously there's a a sense that this is entertainment in a way, but if there are details that are not necessary to tell the story and might cause further harm, then we're not gonna like push to keep those in. Totally. Right? Because we want to respect the because that's the thing. It's like people get consent to telling their stories, I guess, but then they might want to withdraw consent for one aspect of it.
Letting People Tell Their Stories in Their Own Words
SPEAKER_00Do you know what I mean? And also another another thing I just thought of too that came to my mind is like there was like no scripting of the people who were sharing their stories. We they shared their story. There was a lot of emotions, let's say, and we wouldn't say, hey, you know, maybe could you shorten that up so you could we literally sat with 60 hours of audio and video interviews, if you remember, and we had to cut down just from that. We could have we could have asked people to rephrase things in a shorter, more concise way. We made our lives much more difficult by not doing that, but we didn't want to put words in their mouths, right?
A Successful Podcast on a Tiny Budget
SPEAKER_01That's right. Yeah. Yeah, and I think I think a lot of what Listeners don't necessarily hear is like all the hours that go into making something, and especially when you're making something independently, this can become kind of all consuming. Right? The smell the the show had a very small budget. And Understatement of the Century. Yes, understatement of the century. Okay, like obviously we're incredibly proud of how successful it was.
SPEAKER_00I mean, number one on Apple Podcasts. We beat out Joe Rogan folks. Oh my gosh. Is that true? Yeah, we know we did. We beat out Joe Rogan when we were number one on Apple Podcast Canada.
unknownOh my god.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, everyone should beat out Joe Nazan. Um but I want, I think what I want to get at here is that the choices that we made in the making of this show didn't always line up with how a lot of people kind of approach making podcasts, making content. It's not really lined up with how podcasts become visible and like make a lot of money. Um we had an investigative series with a complex narrative arc. Very complex. Right. Um, which took a lot of time to produce, resulted in fewer episodes. Right. Um, that meant fewer releases in people's feeds, right? The algorithm likes more consistent, fewer opportunities to reach new listeners, although I feel like there was a lot of organic reaches in the show. We were very, very lucky, yeah. Right? But imagine we had made like the Wikipedia version of the show.
SPEAKER_00It's so much easier. We just like look up an article, report those facts, or existing news coverage, right?
Doing Every Job Ourselves
SPEAKER_01And that's and like the thing is that's what a lot of people do. And the reason why I want to share the behind the scenes is just because it takes a lot of work to make something like this work and and make it accurate, totally go to the source material, go to original sources. And like if we had had a properly funded investigative show, like how many different people do you think would be working with?
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, we would have researchers, we would have separate people fact-checking, we would have a production assistant, we would have other associate producers, we would have, you know, like separate editors, like it was it was it was just all of us doing all the things. Right. Like how many jobs did we do? I think we I don't know, like all of them. All of all of them. Like ten.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like a million.
SPEAKER_00I don't know.
Pregnancy, Postpartum & the Personal Cost
SPEAKER_01Okay, and like what did I guess what did that mean for us personally? What did that mean for you to do all the jobs?
SPEAKER_00Well, it was so stressful. I mean, remember, we were both very pregnant towards the end of the production of season one. Yes. Then the babies were born, right? But you and I still had to record the second half of the season.
SPEAKER_01Yes. We had a lot of Z out. So home.
SPEAKER_00Remember how hard that was, I think two weeks postpartum. We were back on calls and we were back recording. Yes, we were. And actually, like we had intended for a weekly release, if you remember, but we had to scale it back to bi-weekly. Yes. For that reason.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Right? Yeah. I mean, so I think there was a lot of that. And then there's a lot of just like when you're so deep in something like this, you're not necessarily clocking every hour. You're just like, you're in it. You're in it. And we and we saw that, like, yeah, we never wanted to, and I think even in selling the show, a big part of it is like we didn't want to let the all of the people who had participated down. Like, I feel like that was like a big part of the thing on it. Yeah, because we wanted like we wanted more attention on this case. Yes. And like, totally, you know, I'm not saying it was completely altruistic. Obviously, we gained a lot from this, like we gained a lot of opportunities and a lot of professional experience. I don't want to be like, oh, we're so altruistic. But I do think that it was a big motivator for us to, you know, see it through and try and get more attention on this.
Becoming Part of the Case
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we wanted we wanted to write by the people who were harmed by him, right? But I think it taught us too a lot about our business strategy going forward, right? Yeah. Like, did we have to become part of the case? We did. And we probably we have really, again, in our new show, we're working on a new case we're working on. Yeah, like you know, how how deep do we have to be part of it? I guess it's like for every person working in true crime, like what is your line? Right. Yeah. But because it was such a small group and these women were and people were essentially vigilantes, we came became part of that group, right? It was it was almost like we couldn't not stop ourselves because we knew what was right.
Who Pays for Ethical True Crime?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's true. Um I guess when I think about making this story and think about the kind of ethics of it all, and how much went into it, and why I think we both kind of wanted to reflect on this, is just how much went into the story and how much the cost and risk associated with that is placed on essentially independent creators. Oh, yeah, like for us, it's like, okay, we always envisioned this would be a docuseries. We hoped one day we'd be able to, you know, sell it into a show and all of that kind of stuff. But we worked very much unpaid on this for so many hours. We did not pay ourselves in the podcast.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01Which some people might be surprised to hear because like we had a lot of followers, and you know, by a lot of metrics, it looked like a very successful.
SPEAKER_00Well, absolutely, number one, hundreds of thousands of listeners, yeah, line loans, all of that.
SPEAKER_01Right, all of this kind of stuff. But ultimately, you know, and we eventually sold, yes, sold it, maybe eventually, you know, for a docuseries. Um, but that was only after the podcast had built a large audience, yeah, right? Very true um and proven that it had commercial value, right? Yeah. Um, and by then we kind of already absorbed that risk ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Totally. Like our company covered a lot of the expenses too, because yeah, uh including our own sweat equity, right? Taking us away from other things that we were working on as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so it's interesting to think about because there's not really like a structural incentive to be ethical.
SPEAKER_00No, there's in fact, it's the
Why Good Intentions Can’t Control Audience Reactions
SPEAKER_00opposite, I would say.
SPEAKER_01It's the opposite, right? Like if you really want to make money, if you really want to put out a stream of content, doing this behind the scenes work that nobody sees and nobody really knows to value. Totally. I think it's also important for us to think about that, even though we aimed for this kind of like ethical production, right? And again, I don't think we did it perfectly. I think we tried to do as best as we could. Um, you know, ethical production and also better representation of victims. Yeah. But there are limitations to that. I think a few things I can think about, and maybe you're thinking about some other things, are are that like you can control your reporting and your editing choices and all of that, but you can't control how everybody interprets a story. That's exactly right. Right? Yeah. And people have their own frames that they bring into it. So even when you're trying to position it in a certain way, like we still got backlash, right?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_01Even though we tried to frame it in very much a different way than some other true crime shows do. Um, right? What should the women have known? Yeah, like they should have known better. Right. Often like they have to explain every decision that they made and all this kind of stuff, right? Um, and so I just want to say that like ethics in the intention and in the production don't always guarantee the reception.
SPEAKER_00Right. That's a good point. Yeah, that is a big limitation.
Making the Invisible Work Visible
SPEAKER_01Even though I think it can help, yeah. Um, we couldn't control how people kind of received it. So, what does it actually take to make true crime without treating people's lives as content? I think if we kind of go back to where we started at the beginning and who ends up ultimately paying for that. Uh, well, the work requires, as we've talked about, so much verification, right? So much trust building, relationship building beyond interviews, right? Um, for us, sometimes it meant withholding material that could make the story more traumatic, for example, right? And you know, we had the goal to entertain, but not at the cost of victims. And most of this work is invisible. So the audience, our audience, hears the story, but not the months of checking, the relationship piece, the fact-checking, like all of that kind of stuff. Um, so we thought, why not talk about it and make this a little bit more visible to our listeners who've been here since the beginning. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Um, and a lot of independent creators like take on that cost um before they know a project will find an audience, which like we hoped it would, but we there was no guarantees of it. And I feel like on on social media, there's so much of like a big part of what even influencers do is like you're not supposed to show the effort. Yeah, right?
SPEAKER_00So it's just like there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're supposed to make everything look effortless. And like, there's so much effort and work going into creation of anything, especially something good and something that is like, you know, you want to make sure that you're getting it right and you're doing it right. And so I think exposing some of that work was important to us. Yeah, for sure. And I think this that true crime also makes the stakes of this very, very clear because it is a commercially viable genre. Like we are working in a commercial genre, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely.
Building a More Sustainable Way to Tell These Stories
SPEAKER_01Um, but the same pressure, um, right, and the same pressure will kind of shape any storytelling in the sense that like time is of the essence, right? You gotta work quickly, you gotta do all that stuff, but you still have to get the story right. Yeah. And I think, you know, doing right by victims is also really important. So I just want to kind of leave this episode um just kind of thinking about the ways in which there's not really incentives to do this work ethically, and that oftentimes people have to do this by essentially exploiting their own labor, which isn't really a good model, right? And this doesn't mean that we shouldn't like aim higher or strive for ethics, right? But that this is something that is kind of systemic. Absolutely. And it's something that we think about, we think about like how to build a more sustainable way to do this where we can be ethical.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, and it's interesting too, right? Like, okay, if you're thinking about systemic, like the creation of content and journalism and the state of that industry. The more and more that there's not money going into supporting this kind of stuff, and it's just on the heads of independent producers, the less of this kind of ethical reporting that you're gonna see. Because, to your point, it costs you a lot personally.
SPEAKER_01Okay, that is it for bonus episode one.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for tuning in.
SPEAKER_01See you next time.