Crime Journalistic Investigation that utilizes resources outside police forces often generates plausible leads to be investigated by competent organs. The most unconventional method of investigation that has kept its place in the media is the Psychic reading of unsolved crimes. When it involves psychics and supernatural unexplainable activities, we are all mystified and media vehicles find there a way to keep their readers and viewers hooked.
The American television has produced series of Psychic Detectives and Forensic that portrait police cases that were assisted by mediums.
There is a New Zealand television series called Sensing Murder that is journalistic structured and documented and it touched a nerve for its accuracy. The leads generated by the psychic readings during filming the show are followed by independent investigators and if any solid evidence is gathered, it is sent to the police forces.
The Australian Police and most of Police forces all around the world publicly maintain that they don’t accept assistance from psychics, but they surely will follow any documented and plausible clue coming from any source.
The subject is so fascinating that documentaries produced by investigative research on false claim of psychic powers and farce have followed the launching of Sensing Murder first series. Russel Brown, presented a TV debate, Media7 TV, where Sensing Murder producer David Baldock reinforced the total transparency that the show proposes and that its intention is to try and give an understanding to what happened, hoping the exposure will also work as a positive factor to investigations. For its second series in 2007, producers allowed sceptical and clinical psychologist Nigel Latta to be present backstage and scrutinise the psychic reading as to make sure that what the viewers get is what is really happening, and that no hints nor clues nor possibility of cold reading happen during filming.
Although no crime was solved over four season of the show, the sceptical are surprised to find how accurate the psychics readings are, coming up with details and information never disclosed by the responsible investigation organs.
TV Series Explores Psychic Crime Investigation
Each episode has an introduction that explains that research was carried to find out the most accurate psychics in Australia and New Zealand and the show exhibits the most precise of them all, chosen by their criteria. The first part of the show explains an unsolved crime to the public in a detailed factual way, and then it shows how the psychic reading developed.
Separately filmed, 2 psychics who know nothing about the crime in question are presented with an envelope containing the picture of the crime’s victim. The psychics usually chose not to see the picture and only holding the envelope, describe who the victim is, the name, usually the age and other personal information, from then on they may decide to look at the picture or not and carry on describing what they feel about the crime. They describe the crimes accurately and give all the details they can sense. Through this first part of reading, information offered by the psychics is compared to the facts presented about the crime. Next, each psychic is given a map and use their senses to find a location related to the crime, as where the body was found, and are followed by the filming crew that captures their sensing process and more information they feed. The information collected is then investigated by sensing murder investigative crew and they present their results at the end of the episode.
Type Sensing Murder in your search engine and find the official website for trailers and info.
Checking Results
Although psychic readings and crimes make interesting material and sell well to readers and viewers, investigative journalists have to dig deeper and check with competent organs if it is true or not that leads coming from psychics really helped investigations. Psychics are feeling more comfortable to contact authorities with their psychic clues about crimes, and it causes police to over work and waste vital resources in their searches. In 2007, when two elderly people went missing in Ohio – USA, no one knew what could have happened to them. It was heavily publicised and authorities mobilized the public for information. More than 30 psychics came up with information that overloaded the police as several leads were investigated. When the bodies were found, circumstances, location and everything about the event proved all psychic’s clues to be inaccurate.
When it is published in any media that ‘psychics helped investigation’ without reporting if the psychic’s action really generated leads that solved the case, the information “helped investigation” seems to mislead the reader into believing that psychics have ‘powers’, but although it is impressive when psychics are accurate in their readings, these powers have actually never been proved.