Arizona Prosecutors want TV Shows to have Disclaimers

This appeared in Crime and Justice News, an email service that I subscribed to.

Prosecutor Seeks Disclaimers On TV Crime Shows
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Some Arizona jurors may be under the spell of the "CSI Effect" - looking solely for scientific proof and disregarding witnesses and police testimony, says the East Valley (Az.) Tribune. Maricopa County prosecutor Andrew Thomas last week asked local affiliates of NBC, ABC and CBS to put a disclaimer at the beginning of television shows like "CSI" and "Law & Order" stating that the programs are fiction.

In a new study by the county prosecutor's office, 38 percent of more than 100 prosecutors believed they had at least one trial with an acquittal or hung jury because forensic evidence wasn't readily available, despite a convincing amount of other information. About 40 percent of the time, jurors mention things such as latent prints, ballistics, or mitochondrial DNA. "The shows give the impression that these are the types of things we should be looking for in trials," Thomas said. Officials are confident that adding disclaimers would provide a much-needed dose of reality to drama seekers.

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One of the television channels had a program on recently that showed the major difference between the workings of a forensics unit and what is portrayed on CSI.

Do you think that the so-called "Reality" genre type of programs that are such a large part of the television line-ups contribute to citizens' believing what they see on television to be the absolute truth?

How do we, or can we, assist citizens to understand that television shows are fiction and that just because a talking head on a program says something, it may not be pure fact?