California Crime with Amy Jean tells stories about real people.

The events discussed on this podcast may be history to some listeners, but they remain part of the lives of victims, survivors, families, witnesses, investigators, first responders, and communities. Their experiences are not simply material for a story.

Because of that, CCAJ believes narrative crime storytelling carries an obligation beyond asking whether information is public, interesting, or legally publishable. We must also ask whether it is accurate, necessary, fair, contextualized, and presented with appropriate care.

These standards are published so that listeners, sources, families, and the people represented in our work know what they can expect from CCAJ—and so they can hold us accountable when we fall short.

This is a living standard. It may evolve as we learn, listen, and become better storytellers.

Code of Ethics

Humanity Comes Before Content

Every case involves human beings before it involves a narrative.

Victims will not be treated merely as the event that happened to them. Whenever the available record allows, CCAJ seeks to understand who they were, how they lived, who loved them, and what was lost.

A compelling story is never more important than a person's dignity.

Accuracy Before Drama

CCAJ will not knowingly distort facts, omit essential context, or exaggerate information to make a story more frightening, shocking, mysterious, or entertaining.

Whenever reasonably possible, information will be traced to original records, contemporaneous reporting, court documents, direct interviews, or other reliable sources.

Conflicting accounts will be identified as such. Allegations will not be presented as established fact. When the available evidence does not allow us to know something, we will say so.

Narrative techniques may help tell a story. They must never change the truth of it.

Minimize Unnecessary Harm

Crime is inherently painful. Responsible storytelling cannot promise that discussing it will never cause distress.

CCAJ can, however, continually ask whether potentially harmful material is necessary.

Graphic details, recordings, photographs, descriptions of violence, personal information, and other sensitive material should have a clear narrative, factual, historical, preventative, or public-interest purpose. Their existence in a police report, court file, or other public record does not automatically justify their inclusion.

We will distinguish between information that helps an audience understand what happened and information that merely makes what happened more shocking.

Victims and Survivors Deserve Dignity

CCAJ will approach victims, survivors, relatives, witnesses, and others affected by violence with sensitivity and respect.

Participation in CCAJ is voluntary. No grieving person owes this podcast an interview, photograph, memory, explanation, or response.

When contacting someone affected by a case, CCAJ will identify itself honestly, explain the purpose of the request, respect reasonable boundaries, and avoid coercive or unnecessarily persistent contact.

Children, vulnerable individuals, survivors of sexual violence, and people experiencing acute grief require additional care.

Understanding Is Not Excusing

Crime does not occur without context.

When relevant, CCAJ may examine the life, behavior, relationships, mental state, experiences, grievances, environment, or circumstances of a person who committed violence. This is done to understand how events developed and, when possible, what warning signs, missed opportunities, cultural conditions, or preventative lessons might exist.

Explanation is not exoneration.

Understanding the path that led someone to commit violence does not diminish that person's responsibility, nor does it diminish the lives and suffering of the people they harmed.

CCAJ will avoid turning perpetrators into legends, monsters, celebrities, or objects of fascination at the expense of the people affected by their actions.

Context Matters

CCAJ believes crime stories can tell us something larger about the world in which they occurred.

When supported by the evidence and relevant to the case, episodes may examine issues involving mental health, domestic violence, child abuse, policing, the courts, incarceration, social attitudes, discrimination, school environments, victim services, public policy, prevention, or other systems and conditions.

Not every case represents a systemic failure, and CCAJ will not manufacture one simply to give a story a broader message.

Sometimes the responsibility of the storyteller is simply to document honestly what happened and preserve the humanity of the people involved.

Privacy Still Matters

Publicly available does not always mean ethically necessary.

CCAJ will consider the relevance of private and sensitive information before publishing it, particularly when it concerns people who have not chosen public lives or when disclosure could cause disproportionate harm without meaningfully improving the audience's understanding of the story.

Special consideration will be given to surviving family members, minors, sexual-assault survivors, medical information, addresses, private correspondence, and other deeply personal material.

Prevention Over Fear

When a case offers meaningful opportunities to discuss prevention, warning signs, resources, public safety, mental health, victim services, or ways communities can respond differently, CCAJ will make reasonable efforts to include that information.

The goal is not to leave listeners afraid of the world.

When possible, we want listeners to leave understanding something about it.

Independence and Fairness

CCAJ will not knowingly allow personal relationships, financial interests, audience pressure, popularity, access, or the desire for a more dramatic narrative to determine what is presented as fact.

People accused of wrongdoing deserve appropriate context and fairness. Serious disputed allegations should, when reasonably possible, include the relevant response or position of the person being accused.

Fairness does not require pretending that all evidence or viewpoints carry equal factual weight.

Responsibility for Our Work

CCAJ is responsible for what it publishes.

Research assistance, transcription software, artificial intelligence, editing tools, databases, search engines, or other technologies may assist in producing an episode, but none of them transfers responsibility away from CCAJ.

Technology is not a factual source. Material obtained through technological tools must be evaluated and, where appropriate, verified against reliable evidence.

The final responsibility for accuracy, context, editorial judgment, and harm remains human.

Code of Conduct

These ethical principles should be visible in the way CCAJ actually works.

Before publication, reasonable efforts will be made to verify consequential factual claims and identify the source of those claims.

Facts, allegations, interpretations, theories, and personal opinions will not knowingly be presented as though they are interchangeable.

CCAJ will not invent dialogue, fabricate events, manipulate chronology in a way that materially misrepresents what happened, or create false certainty where the record is uncertain.

Sensational language, graphic material, disturbing audio, crime-scene imagery, and other potentially exploitative material will be evaluated for necessity rather than included simply because it is available.

When interviewing someone affected by trauma, CCAJ will be transparent about who we are, why we are contacting them, how the conversation will be recorded or used, and the fact that participation is voluntary.

A source or family member will not be promised control over an episode unless such an arrangement has actually been agreed upon. Requests involving particularly sensitive material will nevertheless be taken seriously and considered with compassion.

CCAJ will make reasonable efforts to distinguish between what contemporary investigators knew at the time and what became known later, rather than unfairly judging historical decisions using information that was unavailable when those decisions were made.

When discussing failures by police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, courts, schools, medical professionals, journalists, family members, or other individuals and institutions, criticism should be supported by evidence and appropriate context.

When discussing perpetrators, CCAJ will seek understanding without romanticization, mythology, unnecessary repetition of manifestos or propaganda, or disproportionate attention that reduces victims to supporting characters in the perpetrator's story.

When appropriate resources exist for issues discussed in an episode—including domestic violence, sexual assault, suicide prevention, mental health, missing persons, victim assistance, and other public-safety concerns—CCAJ will make reasonable efforts to direct listeners toward credible organizations and information.

Corrections & Accountability

Accuracy and compassion are aspirations, but they are also responsibilities.

CCAJ welcomes good-faith concerns regarding factual errors, missing context, unfair characterization, sourcing, privacy, insensitive language, unnecessary harm, or a possible failure to meet the standards stated on this page.

Concerns will be reviewed seriously.

When CCAJ determines that a factual error has been published, we will correct it as promptly and clearly as reasonably possible. Significant corrections or material editorial changes should be acknowledged rather than silently rewritten whenever practical.

Not every disagreement will result in a change, and accountability does not require surrendering editorial independence. It does require listening, examining the criticism honestly, explaining decisions when appropriate, and being willing to say:

We got this wrong.

Listeners should expect CCAJ to hold itself to the same standards of accountability that it asks of the institutions and individuals discussed on the podcast.

Our Commitment

California Crime with Amy Jean will not always get every decision perfectly right.

Ethical storytelling is not a finish line. It is a continuing practice of asking difficult questions about what we know, what we do not know, why we are telling a story, whose voice may be missing, who could be affected by its publication, and what purpose the story ultimately serves.

The goal is not simply to reconstruct a crime.

It is to remember that behind every report, transcript, photograph, recording, court filing, and headline were human beings living real lives.

They deserve to be treated that way.

-Amy Jean & Josh