True Crime Forum Newcastle
About
True Crime Forum Newcastle organised by Joccoaa Tyne Gray was held on 12th July 2025 and was an opportunity to participate in thought provoking workshops along with hearing from a diverse range of speakers and local podcasters held in the historic venue of Blackfriars in Newcastle upon Tyne. True Crime Forum Newcastle was a great opportunity to get multiple perspectives from the world of true crime with three tracks to choose from and a great chance to go along and meet new people and catch up with familiar faces including those from Crimecon such as special guest Stuart Blues from the British Murders podcast and Kacey Baker host of the Cult Vault Podcast who would be delivering one of the sessions. It was a really amazing day with informative sessions along with fantastic conversations and so much more. You can find out more about the event at northeasttruecrime.co.uk.
The CSI Effect - Reality vs Drama - Angela Davies & Dionne Watson (The Crime Scene Insiders Podcast)
Angela and Dionne host The Crime Scene Insiders - Under the Barrier Tape which is a new podcast started in May this year, they are two ex-Crime Scene Investigators who bring a CSI twist and bring a bit of reality. They have access to a wealth of guests from the network of over twenty years' experience and have recently interviewed the police commissioner of New York and covered Raoul Moat case on their podcast.
Angela and Dionne met in 2005 at Teesside University and graduated in 2008 and joined Northumbria Police where they both dealt with different cases as Crime Scene Investigators but also volume crime which are crimes that happen often from burglaries to murders. They also mentioned that less common cases can be interesting as it gives them an opportunity to think outside the box.
They both left the police in 2012 and founded CSI Training and Events which they have been doing for thirteen years and are also disaster response consultants to keep their skills up to date and worked on a number of airline disasters such as MH-17 which was shot down where they worked for eighteen months travelling back and forth to Holland and they have worked on other airline crashes often travelling via the very airline that was involved in the disaster.
They have also launched and Crime Scene Assistant app to aid forensic awareness to help others on a crime scene. This a front-line training tool to help first responders which is something they are focusing on along with the podcast. They had been discussing doing the podcast for years and liked the sound of their own voices which is what brought them to the True Crime Forum Event in Newcastle to talk about CSI effect about reality vs drama.
The CSI effect came about due to dramas on TV such as CSI, CSI Miami and more which has built up some expectations about what people expect. The biggest impacts include roles where on TV one person does everything from arrest to interviews and even postmortem but in reality, it is a big team effort where Crime Scene Investigators will send things off to specialists and those in forensic disciplines who often stay in the lab.
One of them got called into a cell to photograph someone and it is usual to always have an officer with them but upon entering and looked around the officer had left. So, it can be intimidating sometimes especially if they have heard the person has been aggressive, but they're not dressed in police uniforms so tend to be better treated especially as they are often recording what has happened to them and find ways of building rapport with the people they have to deal with.
Dress and style depicted in TV dramas are their favourite where people are dressed their best with sunglasses and driving SUVs, but the actual truth is suits and driving plain white vans. Their other uniform is black combats with black polo shirt with a badge and black boots as they only wear PPE when at certain crime scenes and if collecting DNA there is a full kit including double gloves or even respirators for biological hazards but doesn't help with the smell. TV portrays the job as glamorous, but crime scene investigation is not at all glamorous in reality.
Technological advance is shown on TV way beyond what it is possible and what is available is so costly that most police forces often don't use them. Fingerprints can take a couple of weeks for results to come back and for DNA there is a backlog, and labs are private now so there is a lot of competition, so price has gone up. Usually, they have to look hard at what they have to send off due to the cost or do what they can in house and bring other types of investigation in or look at strategy to see what evidence will drive an investigation further.
Certainty of evidence is often depicted in TV drama but there is no certainty in forensics in reality, but it is about probability and context of evidence. You may find fingerprints but there may have been a legitimate reason for that so need to consider context. Crime scenes are often so clean in TV compared to reality where it is always high drama, high profile and very clean scenes.
The consequence of the CSI effect is greater expectations such as jurors expecting more weight from forensic evidence. Police also have high expectation that they often tell victims of crime about. They had an example of a scene where they were expected to take samples of cat but that wouldn't help prove anything, there's no DNA database for cats. There was another case where an ambulance had been egged and those there had been told to keep the eggshells for fingerprints but there were only small fragments and eggs are not a good surface for fingerprints anyway. They also mentioned a case where a superintendent's car had a brick put through the window, but it had been raining and fingerprinting doesn't work as the compounds clump in the wet and felt it was a waste of time. A lot of students are jumping on courses some are better than others and competition is really high, and they have an unreasonable expectation of the job such as not wanting to see blood or dead bodies.
Fingerprints can be scanned directly with Live Scan or can even use a portable fingerprint scanner, but these are not common due the cost, but it does allow fingerprints from victims to be scanned for exclusionary purposes. Fingerprints are sweat and the fingerprinting compound binds to the proteins in the sweat and fingerprints can even be recovered after a while. Fingerprints can also be taken from an unidentified body to determine who they are or compare against samples from someone they think it is and often this is used in the disaster response arena. For a body the hands can be massaged to release the tendons to open the hand and can use stickers to take the fingerprints but is easier when have someone to help. There was a situation where they had massaged the hand, and it had opened but when they went to grab something the hand snapped shut and they got their finger stuck in the hand. Other methods are used as may get parts of bodies or they are in poor condition so often put in fluid to be able to get ridge detail or there is degloving where they can take the skin off a finger then put a glove on their own hand and then put the skin on the glove to take the fingerprint.
Offenders sometimes don't want to give fingerprints willingly, but it is allowed to take them with reasonable force, if necessary, this is due to it being seen as a non-intimate sample so they will work in pairs, but the fingerprints still need to have good quality. When taking fingerprints from people they do this to make sure it is done in the right way as there is a knack to it to get the right details and make sure fingers and hands are correct.
Behind the Veil: Understanding Cults & Coercive Control - Kacey Baker, MSc (Cult Vault Podcast)
Kacey is the host of the Cult Vault Podcast and covered topics such as abuse in cults and abuse beyond cults including workplace abuse and more. Kacey also defined the key concepts of cults coercive control and undue influence and recognise physiological tactics, understand experiences and promote critical thinking and compassionate engagement with survivors. Kacey also facilitated participation from the audience to share their own thoughts and stories in confidence, so are not shared here, but it was interesting to hear how the some of the topics may have personally resonated with some of those there, but there was also the understanding that if anyone felt uncomfortable with the topics covered they could leave if needed.
Cult is defined differently depending on where you look or the definition will change depending on who you ask. It is people who have been deprived of their autonomy, there can be religious cults or organisations such as multi-level marketing that can often be defined with cult-like language. for example, various cults could be financial control. The dictionary definition of cult can also be an unorthodox or spurious religion. You could be devoted to people but not sure how people could be devoted to a cult leader. A voodoo or satanic cult of the occult can be mixed up with a cult, before Kacey started her podcast she wouldn't have known the difference between those.
Another definition of a cult is a group, religious organisation or family structure of any size led by a charismatic leader and cults control their members through manipulation, abuse and coercion. These groups can feature transcendent belief systems and create self-sealing systems from which followers find it difficult to escape. You may see a lot of the time abusing and controller parents or caregiver or where children can invert this to control their environment in a cult-like way. Cults aren't just an exotic thing away from us they can be in schools, workplaces and closer to home.
Kacey started the Cult Vault podcast during lockdown and was hearing people's personal stories and realised the way they consumed true crime podcast was unethical and they were detached from the stories and that these were real people and real people's lives. It took them a really long time to reach that realisation and through speaking to people and hearing their experiences were able to change that mindset. Something else that they found when speaking people in modern slavery, in the prison system or basic training in marines and armed forces and there were so many things that resonate over and over again, they were hearing the same patterns such as speech patterns, what to do, who they can live with. There is something happening that hasn't been named, or they haven't come across and they realised there was a thread running throughout these different experiences.
Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist who studied how people are manipulated in extreme environments and defined his eight criteria for thought reform after interviewing prisoners of the Chinese Communist “re-education” camps in the 1950s examining how totalitarian systems control minds. The eight criteria included Milieu control which is controlling what people see, hear, read and say to limit access to outside ideas or opinions along with mystical manipulation which is where leaders claim events are part of a higher plan including making coincidences seem like miracles to prove their power. Other criteria included confession where you must confess your wrongs which is often one publicly to shame or control, sacred science where the groups beliefs are the absolute truth and you're not allowed to question them, loading the language where they used special words or phrases to control thinking and complex ideas are reduced to simple slogans. Criteria also included doctrine over person where the group's beliefs are more important than your own experience and you're wrong if your feelings don't match the doctrine along with dispensing of existence where only loyal members deserve to live of be saved and outsiders or doubters are often seen as enemies or worthless.
Steven Hassan's BITE Model of authoritarian control which re-describes that criteria to then apply them to see if there is cult-like behaviour in someone's life with behaviour control including promoting obedience and dependence, dictating where you live and with whom, restrict and control your sexuality, exploiting you financially and deprive you of sleep. Information control including deliberately withhold or distort information, forbid you from speak with members or critics, divide information into US vs THEM doctrine and self-report feelings or infractions or spy on others. Thought control including change your identity often your name, endure hypnotic or suggestible state, use thought-terminating cliches and reject critical thinking or doubt. Emotional control includes instil fear evert leaving the group, label certain emotions of evil, unworthy or wrong along with promote feelings of guilt, shame, unworthiness plus shun you if you disobey or dissent and teach that there is no happiness without the group.
If a person can control you in a specific way that is just another way that people can control you, for example if you have no children then this is more time for the leader to control you or have many children makes it harder to leave. Many cults will provide the only literature you can read and are not allowed to speak to outsiders or with thought control will be stripped from those things that make you individual as they want people to look and think the same. A lot of self-policing will come in where you go to leadership about having thoughts and then there will be a punishment where you are publicly berated or physical punishments especially children to stop natural child-like behaviour and enforce that children should be seen and not heard.
Kacey mentioned that Jehovah's witnesses' can be perceived as a cult due to the practice of shunning. They are encouraged to not communicate with people outside that faith space so for example children find it hard to make friends outside the faith. If anyone takes part in anything that isn't seen as part of the faith then they will be shunned such as being looked past as if they don't exist, when people show autonomy and use their voice then they can be excommunicated from their friends and family.
Jim Jones is the most infamous cult story due to the tragedy at Peoples Temple with death of over 800 people described as a murder suicide, but it is a mass murder and even if people drank the poison willingly then would be hard to describe it willingly. On the day the mass murder happened you can see that the children were being forcefully injected by adults with Flavor Ade combined with Cyanide, but is often mistakenly said to be Kool-Aid, which is where the term "drinking the Kool-Aid" comes from which means to mean to buying into someone else's belief system.
Charles Manson is another infamous cult story and features on the logo of The Cult Vault, he was 4 foot 11 inches, and it seems that maybe what he did fed into the culture of the time which may have made people more vulnerable. There are nine confirmed murders with cult like control and criminal conspiracy with regards to psychedelics. His case has made the news quite a lot, documentaries and there is even talk about who will inherit his estate as he made quite a lot of money from being so notorious.
Shoko Ashahara founder of Aum Shinrikyo who was behind the attacks on the Tokyo Subway. He was partially blind, and his parents couldn't look after him and was sent to a school for the blind where he would control those who were blind there. He tried to get a lot of members into political power including doctors, lawyers and politicians who were staunch members of the cult. There were many deaths including the Tokyo Subway sarin gas attacks as well as life-line debilitating injuries such as blindness. Before this there had been unsuccessful sarin gas attacks but there were successful political assassinations. If people carried out certain tasks on his behalf, he would let them drink their blood and was a grifter and con artist where he would teach people how to meditate. He would put people in a bath and raise the temperature until they died, he would threaten people's families and ritualistically humiliate them.
Shoko Ashahara and Aum Shinrikyo led to policy reform in Japan as they banned cults but there was a systematic built up to the more dramatic events, so there can be an effort on identifying the conditions and educate on these signs. Unification Church also known as the Moonies have been paying back the mandatory tithing that was paid, and all this money had to be paid back and therefore the Unification Church could no longer operate in certain capacities in Japan. However, the Church of Scientology isn't banned in Japan and in the United Kingdom and their building has a sign outside about getting a free personality test where people may go in and not know anything about them and then people may see the signs and change in their personality as they get more involved but there are people who are outspoken about them but they get harassed for speaking out. The wife of the current head of the Church of Scientology hasn't been seen for two decades although there have been wellness checks by the police where they seemingly have been seen by them.
Paul Mackenzie was responsible for the mass death of over 400 people in Kenya who were starved to death, because they had been told to do this to meet Jesus. A lot of the victims were found buried in the forest, this happened in 2023 but isn't really known and is a case of something that should have been in the news a lot more. He used an isolated and impoverished area to say he would solve their issues and help them build communities but is also under investigation for organ trafficking which is one of the most prolific issues in that part of the world. They haven't been able to prove the trafficking element yet but was using religion and community and there were mass graves without people really noticing as a whole community was brought into this. Once people are brought into something with word of mouth and being brought into conformity is the most successful strategy of cults. If you don't talk about these things then history will repeat itself, can have a macro cult where will be punished about talking about something that can be intrenched in society.
Joseph Di Mambro was a case in Canada with the Order of the Solar Temple where there were burnings across Switzerland and Canada. They were actually a well-known group at the time for not bad reasons, the leaders were charismatic, and they held events with magic shows but had seemly spontaneous things that happened without explanation. They had a tier system where people signed over their life savings and when the leaders exhausted the money and none of the things that happened, they systematically murdered people across their French speaking locations and eventually killed themselves, but it wasn't a religious cult but made up of people who were well standing in the community.
David Koresh with over seventy people killed and longest standoff of over fifty days. Groups are to seem appealing, and David Koresh was one of the most charismatic leaders and people would call him Moses and put himself as the father of everyone. The Branch Davidians had a female leader and he was a wayward wonderer and infiltrated himself into them where he got into a relationship with her and then they started to do more things like stockpiling weapons and armed forces training and forbade husbands to live with their wives, he was a prolific sexual offender, and he managed to leverage himself into a position of power. David said there was an impending doom's day which was the reason to stockpile the weapons, and it was this stock piling got the attention of the ATF who wanted to surrender himself which he refused and brought in the FBI, but it was them who seemly started the fire.
Joseph Kibweteere and Credonia Mwerinde which resulted in mass death of over 700 people from The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda who said they could cure ailments and wee nomadic. There was a lot of mass graves in the areas they have moved through, a lot of followers were put inside a church and were burned but had been told they would receive their own revelations from God which used social conformance to grow the group and they got anything they could of any kind from anyone and they have never been found or caught. It was such an isolated area there is little information out there.
Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles co ran the Heaven's Gate cult related to Hale Bopp comet, they were a huge fan of music would be classed as a UFO cult. They had very specific rules about making food including the ingredients and exactly what is done. 39 people died when the members completed mutual suicide which they describe as murder by coercion. They believed they would ascent onto the tail of the Hale Bopp comet, and they would meet up with a UFO, it was a significant event with the comet as it only comes around every 2,500 years. They cut themselves off from people and did stop recruiting although the website for Heaven's Gate is still around as there are two people who were left around and one of them was actually upset saying they didn't get the opportunity to ascend and was left behind.
Is all religion a cult? When Kacey started the podcast, they felt how could you have a belief system when there is awfulness that happened but now believe that people have the right to believe what they want as long as it doesn't infringe on other people's human rights. Online cults can recruit across the entire globe and can isolate people anywhere and have more diverse ways to operate to best control people everything around them. The TikTok Dance cult seems like people who you would want to have in your personal sphere where they can demonstrate how they have done this for other people with this rule of reciprocity where if you get something then you feel like you need to give something in return and it can often be after so many things that have been done for you.
Where do you think you might be recruited? From birth, on the street, schools or universities, online, in the workplace as there isn't anywhere where you can't be recruited. Why may someone recruit? Is maybe to hit a target but tend to target vulnerable people such as people without strong family connections or those at places that do addition recovery or people who struggle with social situations. Cult leaders want people who are hardworking, committed and smart and striving to do more in the world as these are personality traits that they look for. When someone has moved to a new place or looking for ways to socialise then when offered to join a club and will go along where you will be hit with so much positivity and support.
Coercive control is a form of abuse in which a perpetrator uses a pattern of non-physical tactics such as intimidation, isolation, degradation, surveillance, restrictions on resources and threats to systematically deprive someone of their autonomy, rights and sense of self. In coercive systems in workplaces or domestic situations but there is protection in the law from controlling behaviour and there is training available to people to show what coercive control is. People in cults are being exposed to coercive control but we're not looking at these things systematically.
The Truth about True Crime - What are YOUR ethical responsibilities - Dr Bethany Usher (Newcastle University)
Bethany has been touring with this talk including Crimecon and the Lit and Phil in Newcastle as she leads Newcastle University's Ethics on True Crime, which is media's longest running interest. The audience has had a unique place in true crime and many of us haven't thought about how we produce and consume true crime and talk about out ethical responsibilities in true crime and how new generations will think about producing content. Think about the last piece of factual content that has it routes in crime journalism from documentaries, podcasts and more. There was some court reporting from 1932 that was something that was read for example and pack reporting and crime journalism which started with the coverage of Jack the Ripper. Another was a story on the news of was of a couple guys who crashed into an old people's home in Sunderland where people unfortunately died.
Bethany is a crime journalist by trade and started with the Sunderland Echo and then on to others. They were the victim of a street attack and took three years to get justice but wanted to make sense of their experience by becoming a journalist including why did they or the perpetrators get anonymity. Therefore, by the grace of God go I is an interesting idea and why they became interested in becoming a crime reporter where they interviewed a range of victims and found many similar circumstances to their own and wanted to bring a voice to victims. Bethany worked on a story of a child who has been subject of various podcasts and documentaries with no right to their consent and that person has no voice in this room let alone finding something on television about something that happened to them.
We can all choose, and we can choose whether we want to engage with something or not, what you click on drives crime content in a greater way than ever before as power as an audience has never been greater than ever before. What you click and share has a greater impact than ever and can see consequences of crime as clickbait such as the case of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, his suffering has been used to make money with an article featuring the video with adverts for holidays, black Friday deals and sales. If they had an issue with a headline, it could be changed or an advert that was inappropriate you could have this moved but can still do this, but these things take time to be changed.
Headlines can be written that can dehumanise the victim with appalling use of language and what the family would feel when seeing a headline. Sometimes a lot these headlines position a crime that something is shocking or unbelievable but perhaps it is less shocking as it happens more often than the headline implies. A headline sometimes asks to make a moral judgement on a person, then we can think they are a liar and therefore what else they would expect, presented as churnalism where there is a blatant marketing subtext. Headlines can say someone appears the perfect husband, wife etc until with regards to the person who was the victim can often make the perpetrator seem more humanised than the victim. Someone had added pretty into a headline from a story Bethany had worked on which wasn't great as it seemed like then the victim had more value because of that. The person who is responsible for bringing in visitors to online newspapers use well established marketing tools to create headlines that will drive traffic. The headline being a sell was just on the front page of a newspaper thirty years ago but now clickbait has become a real disease with headlines, also see this with series on Netflix which is marketed this way.
Podcasting and influencing world for true crime such as My Favourite Murder podcast who place a lot of emphasis on the victim rather than learning more about the murderer and they don't over embellish and don't read into things just tell the facts of the story. Eleanor Neale is a TikTok influence who reads crime stories from a domestic realm where there is a growth of these who gather content from other sources, they aren't the greatest fan of them but aren't certainly the worst where she has two accounts for true crime or beauty based where they have these dual narratives are becoming more common. There is a growing number of people of telling true crime stories when putting their makeup on or drinking but there is often radical differences in ethical space where many podcasts put a lot of effort into doing ethical content who put thought into what they do and not just taking second or third hand content but going to court reports from the time which is much more likely to be ethical content. Will be getting more and more traction in this space, but this content relies on crime and court content which is increasingly becoming less common, in order to become a crime reporter you need to know shorthand as can't record anything and need to have the correct qualifications, if the content is not created in the right way then what will be sourced in ten to fifteen years.
People think about the most is the true crime documentary, such as making a murderer which is really engaging initially but found it was really watered down and focused on the crime but then later became more diluted and was more about the murderer as a person. How many of these are focused on the criminal rather than the victims or even with Dahmer where can get bobbleheads and there is a growth in dark fandom and dark tourism or even walking tours of Jack the Ripper tours which have been going on since just after the case, but we don't probably think about that and was it ethical going on the tour but there's no victim's survivor's families alive to this day. There is a focus on these wronged men, but the women don't get the glorification in the same way such as Myra Hindley or Rose West. The thought about the creation of a movie star was transposed onto some criminals where belongings of Ted Bundy have been auctioned for thousands of pounds. The names of the victims are often secondary and unknown in the narrative in well known cases with a humanisation and glorification of the killers over the victims is quite common. There was a trial where clips for a docuseries were used as the person didn't take the stand but had been interviewed for the documentary although this wouldn't ever happen in UK law, there is UK law that prevents people from making money from their crimes due to much more stringent media law.
Spotting ethical re-mediatisation over a commercial retelling where someone has taken an old crime story but have done this in an ethical way and not just in a way to make money but also can be a method to use to make sure creating ethical content. Could have new narrative about something that is in the public interest, where something can have new lines that are in the public interest such as the Yorkshire Ripper where misogyny played a part in the murders and how they took so long to be caught or where victims are the main figures and are the guiding narrative and have been included and shows they have been given the right of consent from the victims who will be impacted by the content. Something may expose injustice, wrongfully accused or unethical practices in crime scene investigations or in journalism in how it was covered or can even be something with a sense of reconciliation.
The Jimmy Saville documentary on Netflix as a commercial retelling comes across sensationalised and in the style of the way he approached himself. Bethany interviewed Jimmy Saville and confronted him that he was a paedophile and knew of three victims who were willing to come forward, she was sent in with the biggest photographer they could which showed how well known things were but the story was spiked, but the story got out after his death because you can't defame him compared to when he was alive as then would have been protected.
Crime is sensational by its nature, this isn't the issue, but the issue is doing the right thing with this sensation to make a difference rather than make money. The public interest around things can be that people get away with things because they are famous, there will be an upcoming case with celebrity where will see someone tried for crimes they have essentially admitted to and for those people who become so famous it masks what they have done. I'll be gone in the dark is a good example of ethical re-mediatisation, the trailer is a much better impression with representation of the victims where they were shown and puts a lot of emphasis on the effort it took to find him. The person who wrote I'll be gone in the talk book Michelle McNamara had put together many cases and was driving force around getting them caught but became addicted to prescription medication and unfortunately died of an overdose.
When you're looking at content all day and all night then what the ethical responsibilities for producers are, they have a duty of care to represent things correctly. Bethany had two archivists who had envelopes of every case and could look at what was said many years later which was a full-time job but there are none and these archives weren't looked after but if this information was not on Google, it was dumped, so these rich original sources were lost.
One of the first editors of the Northern Echo W. T. Stead was a journalist and at 21 became the second editor of the Northern Echo and took it from a pamphlet to a newspaper and is famous as being the journalist who covered the case of Mary Ann Cotton and when the bodies were uncovered interviewed the grave diggers as they uncovered the graves. He also talked about the widespread practice of buying children and helped bring in the first age of consent laws. In an completely unethical way he purchased a child who he took home but left it to the reader's imagination but she had a much better life than the usual outcome but went to jail not for that but for not getting written permission from her father and helped uncover the practice and it was the first consent law in the world that girls had the right to consent for themselves. He also invented pack journalism for the Jack the Ripper crimes and was often on the scene of a crime before the police and spoke to some of those there who may have written the letters and he died on the Titanic.
Is sensation by nature bad, how can we steer this onto more ethical paths, the language of pamphlets from the 1600s have the same kinds of words that sensational stories have the same kind of works we have today. There were also cases of criminals telling their own story or there would be people who would catch out street criminals and write about them. There were also pamphlets that uses the same language to make out the king was a criminal which couldn't have happened without an established language around crime. The idea of stalking or walking around the night was invented by journalism. There was the Penny Dreadfuls and the like which notarised the highwaymen and there's also the illustrated press which was said to be no more sensational than the rest except it was illustrated. Investigation and the tabloid crime reporter with iconographic clothing of those who had one foot in the criminal world and sometimes ahead of the police. W. T. Stead did a telephone interview decades before once police force had a telephone. There is the growth of the mob as a true crime narrative where crime rings were exposed or interviews with people to give them a voice. All of this is not new, and it is taking different shapes and becoming more part of our daily lives so how can we start bringing the industry to more ethical paths.
Bethany is working on co-developing a code of conduct to self-regulate as a bottom up rather than top-down code of conduct. Exposing criminality is by its nature in the public interest, anything that is covered by courts or exposing miscarriage of justices and that podcasters are not of the hook as exposing where they are unethical is as much in the public interest as anything else. This is the first time to define a public interest for a genre and what is not in the public interest which includes doing it only for commercial gain, to produce material based on rumour conjecture or falsehoods which is never in the public interest. Protecting the interests of children isn't controversial such as naming them isn't allowed and you must not identify the names of family members unless there is some link to the crime, anonymity should be extended to more victims of crime than the law such as those victims of stalking or domestic violence. You should not include reference to things about someone unless there is a direct link to the crime itself, or being targeted because of something specific about them such as their sexuality etc. The code is still a work in progress and are hoping to finalise it after working with podcasters, victims and families where there will be voluntary signup and the content will be checked every two to three years and will get a kite mark to prove this and audiences will see this so they will be able to seek out or see that something has more ethical content.