Can true crime function as a form of principled reporting, or do the commercial and entertainment gains its consumers and producers receive from victims make ethical true crime impossible? For many true crime consumers, their engagement with true crime media is not simply passive. Amid the controversy over true crime’s harm to victims, there is a way for true crime content to have the opposite effect. For example, true crime YouTuber Kendall Rae created the Higher Hope Foundation, which aims to support crime victims and their families. The moment true crime media promotes harm to victims, encourages future criminals or ceases to serve any benefit to those impacted, is the moment true crime becomes the immoral vice it is so often claimed to be.

Source: Daily Sun February 20, 2026 20:04 UTC