Robin Andersen

According to Robin Andersen, a scholar and widely published media critic, the rise in popularity of "real" crime television programming has greatly influenced public perception. Andersen argues that the so—called documentary police, or "docu—cop," programs such as Night Beat, Cops, and America's Most Wanted purposefully distort reality in the interest of ratings and in the process create a gross public misunderstanding about crime and law enforcement. The programs represent police officers as universally infallible heroes whose authority should not be challenged and crime as a phenomenon beyond the understanding of ordinary people. Andersen argues that the nature of these programs also limits the viewer's point of view to that of the police, thus prohibiting a wider understanding of the social and economic context out of which crime arises.