Mark Fishman and Gray Cavender

Beginning in the late 1980s, "reality" programs began to appear on television. Blurring the line between news and entertainment, the defining feature of these programs is their claim to present real life. In the following selection Gray Cavender, a professor at the School of Justice Studies at Arizona State University, and Mark Fishman, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, explain the inception and evolution of reality programming. Fishman and Cavender contend that a transformation in social attitudes and crime policies in the United States and other Western countries during the 1960s was important to the creation of crime programming. Over the course of the next three decades, programming needs shifted along with government policy and social attitudes, making possible the birth of "real" crime shows during...