When you see a city’s police department arresting someone on a reality TV show, do you think negative thoughts about the city; or do you think the police are fighting crime?
There are different ways to perceive the use of a city’s first responders in reality TV shows that feature real-life arrests or rescues, but do these shows shed a negative light on the city’s first responders?
The New Orleans City Council’s Governmental Affairs Committee voted this week to proceed with a proposal that would block the city from allowing any first responders to be part of any of these reality shows.
The use of the city’s first responders in a TV reality show came to light when Anna Carter, the sister of Jacob Carter, who was murdered on Bourbon Street last year, complained that she was sent videos of that segment of the show when her brother’s body was shown dead in the street.
The show Homicide Squad: New Orleans used video of NODP detectives working the murder scene and the cameras were close to Jacob’s body. Anna Carter told WWL Louisiana, “I had people send it to me and be like - is this your brother? Like, on the street dead, with film crews all around him?”
I can appreciate how traumatic that would be for Anna Carter, or anyone who would see a loved one’s body dead in the street. However, if that is not allowed in a reality show then it might still be shown on the news. We never saw dead bodies on the news, but times have changed and showing a dead body or even a covered dead body is often a dramatic part of the news or a reality show.
Rather than ban the city completely from allowing our first responders to partner with reality shows, there could be limits on showing a dead body. The body could be blurred, like the faces of juveniles on the news, or the body could be covered. The audience still gets the sensation that someone is dead.
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When I see reality TV shows working with police, for example, I see the police doing their job in real time and in raw terms. No one is wearing make-up, and the camera angles are not planned out. I like the raw reality of it and it does show law enforcement doing their job. It also shows that the police win and many criminals are just dumb relative to the expertise of law enforcement.
I would like to see the city continue to allow first responders to be used in reality TV shows, but there could be agreed upon restrictions when it comes to dead bodies.