‘I am a comedian, not a journalist, and am stumbling my way through this … I thought I was doing everything correctly with the source link in the description. Again, very sorry.” So wrote podcaster Dave Anthony in a post on Reddit this year, responding to allegations of plagiarism against his podcast The Dollop, in which he riffs on episodes from US history with fellow comic Gareth Reynolds. Anthony ran into trouble this summer when Slate editor Josh Levin observed that sections of a Dollop episode from 2017, about the notorious fraudster Linda Taylor, had been lifted verbatim from a piece Levin wrote in 2013. The kerfuffle drew attention to a 2015 incident in which the history/science podcast Damn Interesting claimed that The Dollop had relied heavily on its work.

Elsewhere, the makers of US true-crime show Crime Junkie removed several episodes from its back catalogue after complaints from multiple journalists and podcasters that it had used their research uncredited. As for The Dollop, it improved its practices for citing sources, while also announcing itself as “a fair use podcast” – ie they believed their use of other people’s work to be allowable under copyright law. It wasn’t enough to satisfy Levin. “That legalistic debate misses the point,” he wrote on Twitter. “Whether it’s fair use or not, this behaviour from The Dollop is certainly unethical/ungenerous/rude/shitty.”

The podcast plagiarism row of 2019 was just one part of a maelstrom of ethical issues surrounding this burgeoning industry – issues that, in the very near future, could lead to a major reckoning. Besides plagiarism, the wild west structure of the industry has led to concerns about the voyeuristic nature of some shows and even whether they could prejudice active legal proceedings. It’s a state of affairs that is exacerbated by the amateur nature of the many audio shows, such as Crime Junkie, that are recorded by their hosts at home. Podcasters – many of whom are not trained in journalism or production – can end up bearing similar responsibilities to experienced broadcasters, and regulation is minimal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘A maelstrom of ethical issues’ ... artwork from The Dollop. Photograph: James Fosdike

“I see many podcasters wondering what they are legally allowed to publish,” says Jack Rhysider, the presenter of Darknet Diaries, an indie podcast about hacking and cybercrime. “There are so many YouTubers who play copyrighted music in every video. If YouTube is having a hard time figuring this out, podcasting will be much harder since there’s no central platform to hold accountable.”



Kickstarted, of course, by Serial, true crime is the pre-eminent genre within non-fiction podcasts, one in which the combination of viral success and grave subject matter can be highly problematic. As the format has matured and more cold cases have been raked over, questions about its merits have become more common. “Although the interactive nature of digital true crime seems to open up the potential for greater public engagement with legal processes, many series are exercises in listener manipulation,” says Tanya Horeck, the author of Justice on Demand: True Crime in the Digital Streaming Era. “At their best, true-crime podcasts ask us to think critically about crime as a systemic social problem,” she adds. “At their worst, they stir up emotions for the sake of it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Serial, the podcast phenomenon which helped kick-start the true-crime genre

Forensic scientists have also raised the possibility that the true-crime boom could have an impact on trials, in a similar way to what used to be known as the “CSI Effect”. The global ratings success of the TV drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was seen to have an influence on juries, who started to assume that every murder case would boil down to forensic evidence. Now, as explored by the US site Vulture, the concern is that popular podcasters who are not scientific experts could lead listeners, who might one day be jurors, to demand simple answers to evidentially complex cases, or even to dismiss forensic evidence altogether having seen it involved in so many alleged miscarriages of justice. It’s a predicament that’s becoming a trope; next month, Apple TV+ will release Truth Be Told, a new drama in which Octavia Spencer stars as a podcaster who may have played a key role in a wrongful conviction.

It’s this potentially intense scrutiny, unleashed by reporters who may well be amateurs, that’s most alarming. “It’s great news that podcast production has been democratised, but the ethical considerations are complex and easy to overlook,” says Max O’Brien, executive producer at the audio content company Novel and producer of The Bellingcat Podcast, about the MH17 air crash. He cites the traditional radio background of more established audio producers as one reason why professional productions tend to avoid the traps amateurs fall into. For a UK podcast producer with a BBC background, for instance, “the BBC’s editorial guidelines and Ofcom rules inform all the decisions you make”.

Even with high editorial standards, sometimes personal opinion leads podcast creators to make series that, to others, feel invasive. Take Missing Richard Simmons, a six-part investigation by Dan Taberski into why the curly-haired fitness guru from LA who spent years in the US spotlight has hardly been seen since 2014. As the pod’s download figures grew, critics wondered whether prodding at Simmons was in the public interest. There was a similar furore around a podcast named Britney’s Gram, which explored whether Britney Spears was being held against her will, prompting her to issue a denial. Rumours abounded that the podcast had even been reported to the FBI, a claim refuted by its makers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Missing the point? ... Dan Taberski’s podcast Missing Richard Simmons drew criticism for its quest to locate the exercise guru. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS via Getty Images

Even S-Town, a monster smash from the producers of This American Life and Serial – the most accomplished podcasters in the world, in other words – has prompted doubts over whether its examination of eccentric Alabama horologist John B McLemore was unnecessarily intrusive. A lawsuit filed by the McLemore estate is ongoing – again, though, the ethical arguments are perhaps more interesting than the legal specifics.

What’s clear is that the popularity and, consequently, the power of factual podcasts is not about to recede. That might mean a bedroom broadcaster somewhere is on a path to legal disaster or, worse, producing a viral hit that has foul unintended consequences for the subject of the story. It certainly means that the dissonance between professionals and amateurs will continue to throw up oddities, as evidenced by the news this month that the New York police department is to start a podcast dedicated to unsolved crimes.

Despite a need for regulation, podcasts sometimes need protecting, too. In September, Rhysider – who pondered whether podcasts knew the limits of what they could and couldn’t publish – called out the Western Australia newspaper for basing a feature on quotes taken, uncredited, from one of his interviews. Twenty–three quotes had been lifted from an episode with a hacker, and attributed to the author of the piece. The publication subsequently amended its article, saying that the correct attribution had been removed during the production process. “I was both flattered and upset,” Rhysider recalls.

As for Levin, he turned the article that The Dollop had plundered into a book, The Queen, published in May this year. He launched a podcast to promote it.