People Magazine Investigates
Season 6 ID (*171) 21:00 Reality
People magazine isn’t just about celebs and what they’re getting up to – it also features tales of pop culture and truelife tragedies. And reality show People Magazine Investigates goes that extra step by opening up investigations and re-investigating crimes that made headlines around the US. “We’re not pointing fingers or claiming to be detectives,” says producer and journalist Jess Cagle. “We are looking at stories that got the country talking for whatever reason and we’re finding out more. The who, what, where, why and how.”
The production team makes sure that they’re always conscious of the subject and what unfolded in the crime so as to get a balanced and fair report. “It’s difficult to speak to a family about what and who they’ve lost. Like a mother and daughter duo in episode 2 this season. Between them, someone shot a man dead and claimed that he tried to attack them. The question is who shot the gun and was there an ulterior motive? That’s what we find out,” says Jess.
The team also make use of private detectives who’ve worked on cases to get the inside scoop. “It’s not like we send paparazzi to go out and get photos of murder victims and crime scenes for scandal. We do things by the book and we make sure that we’re ethically and morally on the right side,” says the producer. “We don’t want to cause more grief for the families involved. We want to tell their stories, to give a voice to the victims who’ve lost their lives.”
That doesn’t mean it always goes to plan putting an episode together. “We had instances where restraining orders were taken out for season 6. The families over-reacted but we realised that the story wasn’t happening,” says Jess.