Making a Murderer Prosecutor Wanted Steven Avery to Confess So He Could Write a Book About It

Gawker, January 25, 2016: “Making a Murderer Prosecutor Wanted Steven Avery to Confess So He Could Write a Book About It”

While the recent revelation of Kenneth Kratz’s attempts to capitalize on Steven Avery’s “confession” will likely spark viewers of Making a Murderer’s interest as a source of increasing disgust with the former prosecutor, there is a parallel here that shouldn’t go unnoticed, and links this story more directly to one of its predecessors in popular true crime media: The Jinx. Viewers of the HBO miniseries will recall that director Andrew Jarecki’s focus, particularly within the second set of episodes, was on making Robert Durst confess to his crimes on camera. Where do the ethics lie with Jarecki’s approach? Do we compare his documentary efforts to those of Kratz, or to the widely lauded efforts, for example, of Errol Morris in The Thin Blue Line? And can we see a parallel here - in an “echo” with Linda Williams’ writing on The Thin Blue Line - to the work of Claude Lanzmann, in the unrelenting devotion to making men speak the evils they have committed?