Originally Posted by
Animedude5555
I've always wondered how they draw the line in shows like Law & Order, and CSI, how they decide how much detail to put into describing/depicting the crime in a given episode.
I know for example that a crime drama book called Hit Man, went into SO MUCH detail describing how the bad guy made and used his weapons, silencer, etc that it almost was like a crime instruction manual, and some criminal used it for exactly that. They followed the details in the book to actually murder someone, after which the book company was sued by the family of the murder victim, and so was forced to pull all the copies of the book from store shelves, and ceased any future publication of this book. It's often considered a "banned book" though technically it didn't violate any actual law (it didn't actually order someone to commit a crime, nor did it issue a threat against anybody, nor did it contain illegal material like CP).
This makes me wonder, how much detail TV crime dramas are actually allowed to go into, when describing/depicting any given crime. If it's too much detail they run the risk of a criminal using the info (and therefore getting sued, or in a worst case scenario actually being criminally charged with "aiding and abetting" the commission of a crime). Using too little detail may result in viewers finding the show uninteresting, and thus a loss of ratings and profit for the show's producer and the TV station airing the show. I don't think there's any law that explicitly states what can and cannot be described or depicted in such a show. So what I'm wondering is where to show producers "draw the line" regarding this issue, and how do they decide where to draw it?
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