Television shows like TV2’s Sensing Murder feature entertainers who claim to be “psychics” talking to the dead. The featured entertainers have no psychic abilities as nobody can talk to the dead. To claim otherwise is charlatanism. The shows would be harmless fun except that many people believe these entertainers really do have psychic powers. Sensing Murder is doubly ghoulish because its producers claim it is genuine.
It is thus deeply disappointing to see the Dominion Post giving a huge promotion to this hokum, with a front page splash on Friday claiming the police “have resorted to interviewing two television psychics in a desperate search for a new lead” into the suspected murder of Kaye Stewart, not seen since she went walking in Rimutaka Forest Park in 2005.
Reading this breathless, shoddy story (which took up two thirds of page one), it is apparent that it was Sensing Murder that approached the police offering information about Mrs Stewart, and then told the Dominion Post that the police had “interviewed” its “psychics” Kelvin Cruickshank and Deb Webber.
The story is nothing more than a front page, free advertisement for this shonky show, which is to feature an episode about Mrs Stewart on Tuesday night. One thing is certain, the show has not helped the police inquiry in any way, and it is also clear from reading between the story’s lines that both the charlatans concerned have had dealings with Mrs Stewart’s family that enabled them to “reveal” the name of a suspect and other information not made public previously.
The DomPost appears to defend putting tabloid garbage like this on its front page by saying Sensing Murder has 600,000 viewers a week. Well, that is three times the paper’s readership, so maybe it feels overwhelmed by numbers, and believes the psychic charlatans are celebthorities like all the other television nobodies whose trite opinions it trots out as “news.”
The only redeeming feature is the story saying that, despite Sensing Murder running for three seasons, “it has yet to produce a significant breakthrough in a murder case.” You would never learn that from watching this crock of a programme.
There are many people who could rebut better than I the fraudulent way “psychics” practise their charlatanism, including Skeptics NZ “chair entity” Vicki Hyde, a Christchurch scientist and journalist, who has written and lectured extensively on this issue. Lo, in Saturday’s DomPost, Vicki is given space to say how Sensing Murder “exploits grieving and vulnerable families and adds to the psychic’s marketing potential. It’s ethically distasteful.”
But is that story on page one? Of course not, it is tucked away on page 12. So much for balance.
I flayed Sensing Murder back in January, with a post about Christchurch man Tony Andrews offering $20,000 of his own money to any of the show’s “psychics” if they could demonstrate in a simple test that they actually had psychic abilities. Naturally, neither the show nor its four “mediums” – who also include Sue Nicholson and Scott Russell Hill – have shown any interest in taking the test, because, I argued, they know they are perpetrating a cruel sham. “They have the psychic powers of tadpoles, and they know it,” I wrote then.
Shortly afterwards, I was contacted by Debbie, the sister of Tracey Ann Patient, the Auckland schoolgirl murdered in 1976 and whose case had featured on Sensing Murder. Debbie was appalled by the way the show exploited her sister’s death by claiming to have spoken to her spirit. Debbie said she actually believed in life after death, but accused the programme of perpetrating a sham.
“I have never seen or heard from my sister and I don’t believe those ‘psychics’ did, either,” Debbie said. “It was painful, to say the least, for me to watch the programme, but I felt that I had to. As soon as they started to say that Tracey was talking to them I knew it was a load of rubbish.”
Those two previous posts of mine continue to be Googled and read many times a day most days. I hope the readers of them are taking aboard the message I was conveying, but given the 600,000 viewers of Sensing Murder (more than One News gets some nights), I have my doubts.
26 Comments
September 7, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I think the best approach to this whole issue is to educate people about science much, much better. The brain is material. The mind is a process of the brain. There is no reason to believe that the mind exists detached from its materiality, in fact, we see how material changes in the brain affect the mind via tragedies like brain damage or neurological disorders. There simply is not any evidence that ‘the afterliving’ exist to be ‘communicated’ with.
The problem is really this irrational belief in spirits and an afterlife. Call me intolerant, but I’m very keen on stressing an evidence-based worldview, it might result in fewer charlatans of all varieties. I pray for a world without homeopathists.
September 7, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I am happy to say I am completely intolerant of this fraudulent bullshit.
September 7, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Hear Hear. The first politician who promises to withdraw the $1 million of “entertainment” funding from NZ on Air gets my vote.
September 7, 2008 at 3:52 pm
You’ve got me as well, i won my first journo award for debunking a psychic James O’Bryrne – from the Sceptics… Still my proudest moments and aruably one of best interviews..
But it was a wee while ago!
We should have a bloggers against bollocks group to root out and debunk this stuff at every opportunity..
September 7, 2008 at 4:20 pm
This is a sad consequence of newspapers that have been run into the ground by their overseas owners and can’t afford people that know how to unearth proper stories. Today’s stirring SST editorial in support of “courgaeous” fathers shows they aren’t willing to pay for proper headline writers either.
September 7, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Best review of Sensing Murder I’ve seen was Eating Media Lunch.
September 7, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Matty smith wrote “I pray for a world without homeopathists.”
Pray? What to?
September 7, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Hooray for Poneke – and Raybon Kan (today’s SST.)
Mehtinks the “Sensing Murder” producers detect declining viewer numbers: this is the second piece of garbage news to come out in a fortnight (the first being that weird snippet about a ‘pyschic’ from the show who’d been threatened over the ‘phone “because I knew too much” about a murder dah de dah de dah.)
September 7, 2008 at 5:19 pm
“Pray? What to?”
Heh, was the irony lost? If I really have to choose, I’ll run with the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Best. Deity. Ever.
The Onion recently ran a great piece of satire on ‘psychic detectives’: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/being_a_detective_who_talks_to
September 7, 2008 at 5:30 pm
[...] Poneke applies the blowtorch to the Dom Post’s front page free advertising for the charlatans: It is thus deeply disappointing to see the Dominion Post giving a huge promotion to this hokum, with a front page splash on Friday claiming the police “have resorted to interviewing two television psychics in a desperate search for a new lead” into the suspected murder of Kaye Stewart, not seen since she went walking in Rimutaka Forest Park in 2005. [...]
September 7, 2008 at 6:59 pm
As Keri mentioned above, Raybon Kan’s column in today’s Sunday Star Times, “I See Dud People” is worth a read. He is very annoying at the cop who says he’s “on the fence” about psychics.
“Psychics”, Raybon says, are “full of pshit.”
But he doesn’t just rant. He gives examples of the cold-reading process, explaining how it is that psychics seem to know so much. He even has a recommended reading list.
It’s not a front-page rebuttal, but is well written, informative and kinda funny.
September 7, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Can these people who speak with the dead find out who killed the Ashurton teenager Kirsty Bentley?
Just a thought Greg!
September 7, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Kathryn Ryan interviewed a “psychic” and someone from the police on Friday: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
It’s impossible to protect people from their own stupidity but it’s sad that vulnerable people are taken in by these charlatans.
September 7, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Matty:
Thank you for that Onion clip. Loved it.
‘A lot of ghosts give false information….They’ve just been dead for so long they don’t know what’s going on. And some are just jerks.’
September 7, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I vented my Sensing BS spleen back in ‘06:
It was the most shocking example of exploitation and sensationalism I have seen for a while. The sheer crassness of getting those relatives to relive it all again, doing whatever was in their power to find an answer to their tragedy. The twisted synergy of tabloid presentation and esoteric assertions usually confined to the women’s rags.
http://gonzofreakpower.blogspot.com/2006/01/rogers-v-tvnz.html
September 8, 2008 at 8:52 am
The other sad thing is TVNZ regularly have those psychics as guests in shows such as Morning Breakfast talking about their bullshit conversation with the dead. TVNZ is also a party to its promotion. The sooner the SOE minister kills the ~ million dollar funding of this scam the better. That money could be diverted to some useful science research projects at our universities.
September 8, 2008 at 11:37 am
This episode will have a new format in that the producers knew that the “psychics” had prior knowledge and involvement with the case before filming started, but the “psychics” didn’t know the case was known to them. Apparently halfway through filming their was a moment of “surprise” when the “psychics” realise they already knew the “victim” (it hasn’t been proven she is actually dead yet”). Wonder why they didn’t realise this at the very beginning of filming. After all, they are psychic aren’t they? I can’t wait to see the b-grade acting. I believe the purpose of this new format is to “prove” the psychics have no prior evidence of cases and if they did they would admit to it as they apparently will in this episode. Won’t work for me but unfortunately it will for too many others.
I am now also offering the SM “psychics” an alternative test that only requires them to perform better than lucky guessing. http://www.smpi.co.nz (still no takers)
September 8, 2008 at 12:30 pm
The sad thing is, a lot of people do watch these and do believe there is ’something in it’, but because they deal in such generalities it is hard not to see something in it if you try hard enough or don;t think much about it.
September 8, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I co-wrote and article with Vicki Hyde a few years ago in debunking psychics claims & capabilities around the time that Dare to Believe program by Manawatu psychic Jeanette Wilson on TV3, but unlucky that our article wasn’t published by the Herald’s user contribution for the perspective section.
September 10, 2008 at 11:33 am
This blog is as good as the D.P is these days, utter garbage!
September 11, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Oh dear: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10531680
September 11, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Yes, if people come forward with new information and that lead to arrest of the culprit/s, then it is due to the publicity about the case and not due to the useless information produced by the psychics. It is similar to any publicity being made on TV such as the Police Ten show or similar ones. This is clearly the case, as it is highlighted in the following interview with the Police.
Sensing Bullshit – The New Zealand Police
So, I say that any publicity about unsolved murder cases is good , but not in the way that the media has portrayed that new information has come from the deluded psychics.
September 17, 2008 at 9:11 pm
What fascinating small minded commentary you all purvey.
It is reminiscent of the flat earth society – so sure that they are right, so certain that opposing camp is wrong – not entertaining for a moment that the extent of knowledge may be so limited as to not be worthy of the word.
There are undoubted examples of charlatans who masquerade as “psychic”. It is not hard to find them or expose them.
But there are also compelling examples of “psychics” who appear genuine and provide evidence that is not so easily dismissed.
Are they “speaking” with the dead ? Who knows. The short point is that they are able to extract information that is cogent, relevant and apposite.
That they attribute the knowledge as coming from those who have “passed over” does not make them sharlatans or liars. It may simply mean that the state of our knowledge is incomplete in the same way that our medical knowledge has only recently expanded to understand the relevance of DNA for example.
The cynics who berate these people seem to me to have some emotional reaction to the concept of some sort of survival following death.
I can understand that – death is a difficult thing to accept and grief can plague our emotions and cloud the mind.
I cannot rule out the possibility that these people are genuine and accurate and that the state of our knowledge is incomplete.
Rather than closing the mind, I would invite cynics to keep an open mind.
March 3, 2009 at 9:35 pm
I wondered if the star psychics from the Sensing Murder show predicted the demise of their production company Nixon Television?
TV firm goes into receivership
I bet that the dead friends/spirits who have helped Nixon Television and David Baldock’s in the last few years with information from the other side, didn’t even know the impending demise of their mates from this side of the world.
This is good, because TVNZ funded the Sensing Murder show (a huge amount of $1 million). Now this same amount of money budgeted for this years series can be diverted to useful law enforcement resources that is much needed by Detective Senior Sergeant Ross Levy of Lower Hutt CIB, who endorsed this bullsh*t on TV last year (2008).
March 5, 2009 at 12:20 am
Thank you Fala’! Hadnt caught up with that news.
So – less- or even no?- exploitative ’shows’ about so-called psychics and their attendant predatory behaviours towards the bereaved?I can only hope!
March 5, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I notice on Stuff’s new look website (www.stuff.co.nz) the Horoscopes were deemed important enough to get front page treatment and no ability through their customisation options to remove it !
Sad.