Vice TV’s Dark Side of the ’90s tackles the copaganda of Cops
https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-cops-forced-ugly-copaganda-down-americas-throat
The latest episode of the Vice TV docuseries argues that because Cops showed real events but gave police departments editorial control, it "was therefore both realistic and deceptive, creating a gap between perception and reality that was epitomized by the 1991 caught-on-camcorder beating of Rodney King," says Nick Schager. "That Cops’ ratings waned as smartphones became ubiquitous, leading to unvarnished views of unsavory police conduct, is undeniable. Vice TV’s docuseries, though, only cursorily gets into the messy duality of the series (or its skewed—and some would say racist—depiction of people of color), whose cable-TV tenure ultimately ended in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the global protests that followed. Moreover, while contextualizing the show’s legacy is important, the fact that Dark Side of the ’90s installment on Cops spends substantial time in the 2000s and 2010s underscores its general thinness."