Holden Decries Plan to Air Criminals’ Confessions

Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden on Thursday called on Court TV and its corporate parent Time Warner to stop production of a new reality television program featuring convicts recounting their crimes in grisly detail.

“Time Warner Cable and Liberty Media Group have clearly stepped over the line of decency with the intent to prey on society’s weaknesses by appealing to their curiosity for gore,” Holden wrote in a letter to Time Warner Cable President Barry Rosenblum. “By airing this program you will aid in destroying America, inch by inch.”

Art Bell, Court TV executive vice president of programming, said he was proud of the show, titled “Confessions,” and called it a “logical extension” of the cable network’s coverage of court trials and other aspects of the criminal justice system.

The show features the statements of criminals videotaped by law enforcement officials.

“We feel that ‘Confessions’ contributes valuable perspective to the public debate about crime and punishment,” said Bell. “These are real criminals. This is not a Hollywood version of what bad guys are. These are bad guys.”

Few people beyond the programming executive, the producers and a test audience of regular Court TV viewers have actually seen the show, Bell said.

Holden, who was told about the show by council aides, said he didn’t need to see the program to conclude that it is repugnant enough to merit a boycott.

At a time when reality-based TV shows featuring conniving people on a desert island and prickly housemates stuck in a home together are soaring in popularity, Holden said he was incensed to learn that the newest example of the genre features murderers, rapists and other criminals.

“Confessions,” Bell said, “shines a light on a dark area of the criminal justice system.”

The half-hour show is scheduled to air at 10 p.m. Sundays starting Sept. 10. It will show mostly uncensored tapes--culled initially from case files in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Producers have pored over hundreds of confessions, Bell said, “looking for confessions that make interesting television, tell a story, and show these guys for what they are.”

At the close of each confession, a script will appear explaining what punishment the criminal was given.

Holden said he was told the first program will feature a homeless man describing a rape, a man talking about how he killed a woman in her apartment and dismembered her, and a male prostitute who recounts how he murdered a client in a wheelchair.

“Can you believe that? They’ve gone crazy!” an irate Holden said in an interview. “This is reality-based television’s all-time low.”

The councilman said he would submit a motion calling for a boycott when the council returns Sept. 4. And he said he would be circulating a letter to politicians in other major cities asking them to do the same.

However, Marc Klaas, whose daughter, Polly, was kidnapped and strangled by Richard Allen Davis in 1993, said viewers would get a better understanding of criminal behavior from the show.