How do changing the names protect the innocent?

I believe it is because everyone, even the guilty, have a right to some privacy. Yes, these criminals did something wrong, but although the "bad guys" on Dragnet were caught and for the most case, imprisoned for their crime, they also have the right to start over, once they have served their time and released.

Broadcasting their true names out over the airwaves would pretty much wreck that. (The real people the episodes were based on, probably had to deal with that enough anyway.) Once they had served their time, they had a right to start over, and it would be much harder, and possibly a violation of their civil rights to have their story broadcast.

The practice was in place also to protect their other family members -- let's say, for instance, the guy who conned everyone he came in contact with... Mr. Loomis? had a sister or brother that was a totally respectable, law abiding person. It would be horrible for them to have their brother's story dramatized on TV with his real name. Other's could not want to work with any of his relatives for fear on them doing something similar to them.

Make sense? Even in more modern times,people make concessions for this kind of thing. In Centennial, a miniseries back in the 70's changed the man who led the slaughter of a peaceful tribe of American Indians from Chivington to Skimmerhorn -- When Taylor Caldwell wrote The Captain's and the Kings, which was about the Kennedy family, she changed all the names, and when the story took place. I am sure there are other examples... like the fact that for the most part, when they have to have the President show up in a movie, they don't use a lookalike Obama, or Bush, or Regan. They use a totally made up president.

It is funny you should ask this... I have a dim memory of asking my mother pretty much the same question when the show ran originally, back in the late 60's and 70's.


How sad, that you were not born in my time, nor I, in yours.