On this episode of "The Federalist Radio Hour," Brenda Schuler, producer and researcher for The Daily Wire series "Convicting A Murderer," joins Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to explain what people get wrong about convicted murderer Steven Avery and analyze how documentaries have strayed from journalism to become entertainment.If you care about combatting the corrupt media that continue to inflict devastating damage on our country, please give a gift to help The Federalist do the real journalism America needs.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Thousands of options out there, how do you know you're making the right choice?
Young as your trusted business partner, we've vetted the best tech on the market. We draft your technology road map.
To help you hit your business targets by bundling services to cut costs and save time on your projects.
Businesses to become a modern office by leveraging technology as a business advantage. To schedule a free consultation, visit rjyoung.com. That's rjyoung.com. Oh no, Max, we're out of here fleeing tick meds. But missing one dose is probably fine, right? Okay, okay, we'll get more. It's summertime and flea...
- Chees and ticks never take a vacation, so your pet's protection can't either. With Chewy Auto-Ship, you'll have the ease of knowing your pet's health is covered with customizable repeat deliveries at a discount.
You never miss a dose of protection and your pet stays safe all summer long. Shop chewy.com today.
We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Juczynski, Culture Editor here at The Federalist. As always, you can email the show at [email protected], follow us on Twitter @FDRLST, and make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts. You can subscribe to the premium version of our website at thefederalist.com as well.
We're excited to be joined by Brenda Schuler. She's a producer and researcher on the Daily Wire series, Convicting a Murderer. Brenda, welcome to.
At the Federalist Radio Hour. - Thank you, Emily. Glad to be here. - So we were just talking before we started the tape rolling kind of about how I'm sort of the target audience for what you guys did with convicting a murderer, because when I watched the original Making a Murderer,
Really entertaining. I actually watched it a couple of times. My dad was really invested in it and wanted to watch it again and sort of go through things. And you know, my take is like, seems like this guy got railroaded, but I don't really know. When I watched Convicting a Murderer and by the way, yeah, the second version of Making a Murderer had kind of a similar takeaway. But when I watched Convicting a Murderer, oh my gosh, the level of deception that you guys were actually able to prove really brought me around to another side on that. So in a way, Brenda, it sounds like that's kind of what you were going for with Convicting a Murderer is to reach sort of the norm.
Me people who reacted and were done such a disservice by the original. I think that's exactly it, Emily. We didn't go into this to try to convince the people that we'll call
For lack of a better term, but we didn't go into this to try to convince the people whose minds were made up that were never
to change their mind. We went into this for the people who watch.
Making the murder. Thought there was a dis-- that there was some type of railroading going on. Perhaps some type of conspiracy.
The police planting evidence to frame Stephen to save this $36 million. But then when they were done, they walked away.
Change things in their life to follow this case or do tons of research or anything. So we wanted to hit that audience because we thought that was the majority of the viewers. That's who that would be.
And that's what we felt the general population, how most of the people that watch Making a Murder felt. They came away from it thinking that he was innocent, but they didn't do anything further. So that truly was right.
No, that's really interesting. And I actually, I feel like your story is an interesting part of this story too. Because for some people, it was very much the opposite. They watched the original and were immediately polarized in one direction or the other and wanted to dive into these stories. And there's so much open records, public records that you can do on the internet. You can just dive on into all of these paths towards the truth.
Assumed by it. And you know, when you're, let's to borrow a word, convicted in one direction or the other, there's so much opportunity to get closer and closer to the truth and to get closer and closer to the truth about the series. So, Brenda, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you react.
To the original series. - Sure. Emily, well, as you know, I live about an hour from where the cell took place in Manitowoc and...
I originally was aware of both cases, the 1985 wrongful conviction and also the 2005 murder of Theresa Halbach. So, um, I followed a...
Obviously and was aware of that. And when I, before I watched Making a Murderer,
I truly believe that he was guilty of Teresa's murder. And once I watched Making a Murder, I remember sitting on the sofa talking to my husband. And after each episode just felt like, wow, I just don't understand. Kind of like I said in the film, I'm like, what is going on?
Unbelievable to me because I never heard of really the framing theory back in 2005-16
And it wasn't like this big, big deal. It was just kind of something the defense had to do because Stephen.
Was telling everybody he was framed. So that's what they had to go with. So I really didn't think much about that.
To view this and other transcripts, as well as support the generation of new transcripts, please subscribe.