No one expects TV shows to reflect absolute reality. But what if the tropes writers rely on are reinforcing dangerous misperceptions?
According to a new report, cop shows, legal dramas and other crime-oriented series are loaded with concerning misrepresentations. Unjust actions by police are portrayed not only as routine and harmless, but acceptable and necessary. More to the point: “These series make heroes out of people who violate our rights.”
Rashad Robinson is president of the racial justice organization Color of Change, which conducted the study and assessed 26 TV series (across broadcast network, cable and streaming) in collaboration with the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California. Among the shows examined: “Blue Bloods” and “NCIS” on CBS; “Bosch” on Amazon; “Narcos” on Netflix; and “Law & Order: SVU” and “Chicago P.D.” on NBC.
“For the past 20 years in this country violent crime has steadily gone down,” he said, “but if you ask most Americans, in Pew polls and others, they believe violent crime is going up. So we know there is a gap between perception and reality. And we know that what people think about the system — in terms of whether it’s working or not — plays into what type of reforms they believe are viable.”
The report found that crime shows imply “justice gets done because the rules get broken, that abuse and harm are rare, that racial bias and systemic racism do not exist and that current police methods keep people safe and are necessary for solving crime.”
Sometimes this message is almost casually delivered. Consider a line from “NCIS: New Orleans” when Scott Bakula’s special agent in charge asks one of his colleagues, “Where’d you get this information?” The response: “Don’t ask.”
Sometimes it’s more overt. In an interrogation scene from “Hawaii Five-0,” Chi McBride’s Capt. Lou Grover turns to a member of the show’s task force, played by Beulah Koale, and asks facetiously, “Are you sure you didn’t give him brain damage when you when you slammed his head against the steering wheel?” to which his colleague replies, “I think brain damage was a pre-existing condition.”
But if the shows in question are fiction, why do these kinds of misrepresentations matter? Color of Change hammers home the point: What we watch on TV can have profound effects on how we think and talk about the world around us.
And these are some of the most popular shows on TV — and on CBS, in particular. Last fall, “NCIS” was the No. 2 show on the network and was broadcast television’s most watched drama with an average of 15.3 million viewers. Right behind that was “FBI,” with 12.3 million viewers. The top 10 shows for CBS include “Seal Team,” “Blue Bloods,” “S.W.A.T.,” “NCIS: New Orleans,” “Hawaii Five-0” and “NCIS: Los Angeles.”
On NBC, “Chicago P.D.” is broadcast TV’s fourth most watched drama.
Assessing ‘Chicago P.D.’
“Police on these shows are overly humanized at the expense of everyone else,” said Robinson. “It’s a system where the good guy does bad things and gets away with it, and the ends justify the means.”
Most cop shows have a police consultant on staff (on “Chicago P.D.,” it’s CPD veteran Brian Luce), and yet typically there is no equivalent position held by a police reform advocate — or someone who has been the victim of police violence.
According to Robinson’s findings, crime shows across the board have few if any people of color on their writing staffs. His report estimates last season’s writers room for “Chicago P.D.” — which is based in Los Angeles — was at least 90 percent white and majority male.
“When you haven’t been on the receiving end of police harassment or violence, then you shouldn’t be writing about this, because you’re never going to be able to capture the emotion of people experiencing it every day,” said to Crista Noel, an activist with Women’s All Points Bulletin, a Chicago organization that advocates on behalf of women who have been treated violently by police.
How concerned are the show’s writers and producers about the documented abuses of the real Chicago Police Department — and the ways the show’s fictional portrayals might be providing narrative justification for those abuses? No one from “Chicago P.D.” was available to discuss Color of Change’s findings, according to a studio publicist.
“Chicago P.D.” is part of producer Dick Wolf’s TV empire, which also includes the “Law & Order” franchise, the two “FBI” series on CBS and the NBC shows set in Chicago. In January, Wolf told TV critics, “We are not making political statements in any way, shape, or form.”
Not true, Robinson said. “You’d have to be living behind a gate with your head in the sand to believe that you could write a show about police officers in 2020, especially in a city like Chicago, and say it’s not political. To be apolitical about race is a statement that racism doesn’t exist, that it’s not a factor, that it’s not important — that’s actually a political act. …
“I call him out because when he’s asked and given the opportunity to be reflective about the role of these shows, he’s made the choice to ignore the consequences.”
Robinson noted that a person of color is more likely to be a suspect on “Chicago P.D.” than on any of the other shows they looked at, with the exception of “Narcos” (which is set in Colombia). He referred to an exchange between two “Chicago P.D.” characters from Season 5.
Sgt. Voight leads the intelligence unit at the show’s center, and an independent police auditor (named Woods) has spent the episode looking over his shoulder:
Voight: “You don’t get it, do you? After all this time.”
Woods: “Get what?”
Voight: “The difference between dirty and necessary. Like it or not, you and all your self-righteous friends in the ivory tower, you need people like me out on the streets. Doing the things regular cops aren’t willing to do. Going the extra mile to make sure the truly evil, the truly dangerous, go away. I thin the herd for the greater good.”
Voight is forever shaving off corners or blatantly violating people’s rights. His behavior echoes that of real Chicago police, as detailed in an excoriating 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Justice. So is that a good thing — that the show is accurate, warts and all?
“In one sense, it is a realistic representation,” said Robinson. “But the effect of how these shows are written and designed — they’re making a political statement based on who they prioritize as heroes and whose unethical or illegal behavior is made to seem legitimate.”
But Robinson is hopeful. There are ways for crime shows to genuinely grapple with the issues at hand, he said. Among his group’s recommendations: Showrunners need to “proactively seek perspectives and information beyond what they already know, especially when it comes to race. They must also cease relying so heavily on police consultants and other self-interested defenders of the public fantasy about the criminal justice system.”
Since the study’s release last month, his organization has been asked to speak to the writers rooms of various shows.
“Chicago P.D.” is not one of them.
Accuracy matters
Imagine, Robinson said, if a show like “Grey’s Anatomy” put out information about HIV and AIDS that was knowingly false: “We wouldn’t say, ‘Well, that’s entertainment. They have no responsibility to the public, it’s no big deal.’ ”
The same thinking should apply to crime shows, he said. “The fact of the matter is, they’re often ripped from the headlines. They’re not setting these shows on Mars, they’re rooting them in an American justice system.”
Steven Thrasher, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism who focuses on social justice, started tweeting last fall about the prevalence of black cops appearing in TV and film. These characters, he noted, are often used to convey a “not all cops” message, and by doing so become “a bulwark meant to ease tension between ideas that cops (individually) and policing (as a practice) are inherently racist.”
Reached by phone, Thrasher said he has been pondering, “What has this meant in the Black Lives Matter era? And I think these first responder shows do the work of normalizing and legitimizing a lot of activity that activists have been asking people to question. You end up cheering for these people — but that makes it harder for the public to believe that something like Homan Square is real.” Homan Square was an alleged off-the-books police interrogation site on Chicago’s West Side.
Sometimes even when you’re wise to the fallacies that undergird these shows, it’s hard to look away. They’re built to entertain. Thrasher said he has a relative who’s active in social justice work around policing who still enjoys watching police procedurals.
Noel, of Women’s All Points Bulletin, said “Law & Order: SVU” used to be a favorite, but she’s mostly stopped watching cop shows.
“They reinforce people’s perceptions that it’s OK for police officers to violate civil liberties left and right,” she said. “And that’s what made me stop … You’ll see a cop on TV use excessive force and we know that’s the real deal — but then they don’t challenge it, they just show it like it’s no problem.
“If you’ve never been treated badly by the police,” she added, “then you’re getting all your information from television.”
Biggest misconception
According to the report from Color of Change, almost all cop shows convey the impression that change isn’t needed.
“Oh, wow. That is such misinformation to feed viewers,” said Shannon Spalding, the Chicago police officer-turned-whistleblower who helped build a case against a corrupt team of officers who preyed specifically on black people on the city’s South Side. “Change is definitely needed. I can tell you as a police officer with over 25 years in the Chicago Police Department, that is probably one of the biggest misconceptions.
“For the average citizen who does not encounter this injustice on a regular basis, it’s so much easier to believe it doesn’t exist, because they can go about their daily lives being unaffected by it. … But we have to accept that corruption still exists and that people’s rights are being violated every day.”
A final thought from Northwestern’s Thrasher.
“In covering protests in Ferguson (Mo.), New York and Baltimore, I have often heard activists say that they think another world is possible,” he said. “Similarly, when I look at the stories on TV, I think another world is possible. There are stories other than those of police procedurals. Advertisers and those who control the medium might not want us watching those stories. But another TV world is possible.”
