We’ve done this once before, counting out some examples of copaganda in media. Now we’re back, and bringing you five more instances of copaganda in media.
Before we begin, a quick reminder of what copaganda actually is. Copaganda, as described in the previous post, is “propaganda that normalizes, valorizes, or otherwise paints policing in a positive light. More than that, it paints policing as natural, something so imperative to a functioning society that it becomes almost synonymous with safety, the single thread that keeps society from instantly unraveling.”
Where might we find copaganda in our everyday lives and media, you ask? Allow me to show you.
Let’s begin.
1. To Catch a Predator
Description: A reality TV show in which Dateline NBC reporter Chris Hansen confronts online predators who show up to a sting house set up by law enforcement and a volunteer organization that exposes predators.
Where’s the Copaganda? Everybody hates child predators. So everybody loves watching a child predator have the worst day of their life.
Watching this grown man walk into a house where they thought they’d be meeting a child to [redacted], only to come face-to-face with Chris fucking Hansen? The look on their face when they see him, and when they hear the dreaded, “Why don’t you take a seat right over there?”
Getting humiliated on live television, exposed to the world as the lowest of the low, the worst of humanity, and then getting arrested to top it all off?
Delicious.
A show like this is the ultimate schadenfreude, justice delivered on a silver platter. Who wouldn’t love that? Who doesn’t love seeing a child predator get tackled to the ground while he shouts, “Oh, Lord!” into the grass like a goober? Or Hansen’s little one-liners when he comes out to greet a creeper like it’s just another Tuesday (“No hug for me?” “Hey, boo.” “Hey, Tex, how ya doing?”)?
I love TCAP. I like a lot of the media on this list. But I think it’s important to really analyze copaganda in media and how effective it can be. The sense of justice we feel at watching these predators get humiliated on TV and then arrested glosses over the reality of policing and the fact that most sexual violence crimes don’t get reported, and if they do, as few as three out of every one hundred rapists will ever actually face even a single day in prison.
Is it super satisfying to watch predators face justice? Of course. But don’t let it fool you into thinking that that’s the norm by any means. As discussed in the first post, it’s not uncommon for police departments to work with the media if that media makes them look good. And their appearance on TCAP definitely makes them look good.
2. Men in Black (all of them)
Description: A human-policing cop becomes an alien-policing and immigration cop when he joins the secret organization, the Men in Black.
Where’s the Copaganda? This one might allude to ICE better than your average police department, but its function is the same.
Again, I like this series. It’s a fun watch. But this is policing amped up to another level through an undercover organization that polices and manages the comings and goings of alien lifeforms.
“You’re overthinking it, Noodles. It’s just fun media for you to enjoy.”
I’m not saying it’s intentional, but it is a bit on the nose considering it’s depressingly normalized in America to refer to undocumented immigrants as “aliens” who are invading our precious, beautiful, pure country, and leeching all of our resources.
The portrayal of immigrants as literal alien lifeforms potentially dangerous to all of humanity is a little too on the nose to just ignore. The first movie shows an alien crashing into a farmer’s truck, destroying it, then promptly sucking all the meat and bones out of him and claiming his skin as its own. Sure, the farmer was a massive douche, but the implications are the same: aliens are taking over. They’re coming to take errr jerrrbs, our livelihoods! We need a heroic organization to keep tabs on them and keep the bad ones out!
The MIB, ultimately, is a policing organization that defends our homes from alien lifeforms seeking asylum, many of whom often look to cause problems or even endanger all of humanity.
(Update September 2026: Okay, so I came across a clip recently from the first Men in Black where the protagonist Agent J is first being recruited, and one of his tests puts all of the candidates in a simulation with a bunch of terrifying aliens…and a random little girl.
The other candidates spray bullets at both of the funky looking aliens. Agent J is the only one who pops the little girl. When asked why, he explains that the scary-looking one hanging from a streetlamp was just doing his workout, the snarling one was actually just holding a tissue because he was sneezing, and the little girl was an, “8-year old white girl, middle of the ghetto, bunch of monsters, with quantum-physics books. She about to start some shit. She’s about eight years old, those books are way too advanced for her.”
I totally forgot about this scene, and I must admit, I mess with it. I can appreciate that this movie about a secret government organization that monitors alien refugees for “the bad ones” is willing to grapple with the idea that someone looking a certain way doesn’t make them a bad egg.
I still think it’s copaganda. But plus respect.)
3. The House of the Dead
Description: The fictional law enforcement organization, the AMS, is sent to stop the mad scientist Dr. Curien from unleashing his hordes of undead on the human populace.
Where’s the Copaganda? Humanity is on the verge of a zombie apocalypse, and it’s up to two totally-not-cops to stop the evil scientist from seeing his plans to fruition.
Lots of copaganda involves cops saving the day, if not the entire world. The House of the Dead is no exception, featuring a cop player-character in Thomas Rogan, who works for the AMS and is tasked with investigating the activities of Dr. Curien and his hostile, zombie-like entities.
I’m gonna be real with you: if cops can’t even enter the same room as an active gunman who is in the middle of murdering 19 children and 2 teachers, I don’t know how realistic it is for a single cop to brave a mad scientist’s mansion to stop his army of grotesque abominations, all on (presumably) a cop’s salary. But copaganda tends to portray the police as endlessly brave and noble, diving into danger without sparing a single thought to their own safety and well-being. While I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as a cop who could fit this description, I am saying that they’re few and far between.
4. Across the Spiderverse
MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT
Description: Spiderman Miles Morales travels across the multiverse, where he encounters various Spider-People from other dimensions.
Where’s the Copaganda? I love, love the Spiderverse. As an Afro-Boricua woman with a Puerto Rican mom and a Black dad, both from New York City, this is a piece of media that’s really near and dear to my heart. I have never related more to a character than I do with Miles Morales and his family, and that’s simply a fact.
However, copaganda is still copaganda, man. And the fact is, police are a huge part of the whole Spiderverse apparatus, with important people in the various Spidermens’ lives often being members of law enforcement. In fact, these members of law enforcement are literally part of the canon, with their demise being another part of the canon that Miles rebels against the entire Spider-Society to prevent from happening in his own universe—to save his police officer father after he’s promoted to captain.
I’m holding out hope that there will be some kind of commentary on policing in Beyond the Spiderverse, but as it stands right now, this wonderful piece of media unfortunately needs to end up on this list…because it is copaganda.
5. Explore With Us/JCS Inspired/A&E/Law & Crime Network (and other true crime documentary YouTube channels)
Description: YouTube channels that cover murder investigations by analyzing police interrogations.
Where’s the Copaganda? You might be thinking, “Analyzing a police interrogation video is hardly copaganda. It can be completely neutral in its handling of the case.”
Sometimes this can be true, particularly when these channels remain objective enough in their analysis to acknowledge what’s done right, while also being willing to criticize what’s done wrong in each case. I’ve seen EWU do this with a case where the interrogator failed to build “rapport” with the suspect, which is a common technique of interrogators to build a bit of trust with the person they’re interrogating to more effectively coax information out of them.
However, in many cases, that’s…kind of the problem. Most of these channels analyze what is known as the Reid technique, an interrogation tactic popularized by John E. Reid in 1955. The technique has three stages, each one intended to get the suspect to let their guard down and slowly crumble under pressure: factual analysis, behavior analysis, and interrogation.
According to psychologist Saul Kassin in his book on false confessions, Duped, one of the problems with the Reid technique is that it assumes guilt and is “preceded by a ‘neutral’ interview, wherein police determine on a hunch masked as science whether a suspect is lying or telling the truth.” The entire technique is grounded in what is essentially pseudoscience: reading body language and assuming guilt based on how uncomfortable or shifty the subject appears. It does not account for different people reacting to stressful situations in different ways.
The reason I mark YouTube channels such as Explore With Us as copaganda despite enjoying them myself, is because they tend to analyze the result of interrogations using the Reid technique exactly the same way police do. Although the Reid technique has resulted in numerous false confessions, these YouTube channels analyze things like body language and tone, and they tend to come to the same conclusion as the police…guilty.
Update + Correction 2026:
So I just learned the backstory of To Catch a Predator, which really drives home what blatant propaganda it is and does not reflect well on Chris Hansen, the cops, or Dateline. This video by Skip Intro does a pretty good deep dive into how the show works, why it fails to deter or bring awareness to child predators, and how the show ended after pretty much getting someone killed when it was entirely preventable. All for those sweet, sweet views, babyyyyyyy!
Explore With Us is literal slop at this point. As mentioned in this post, I’d always disliked the Reid technique approach to determining a suspect’s guilt and the way this channel fixates on it despite my admitted fascination with these interrogations. But my misgivings about it have proven true, as they’ve really leaned into the copaganda slop machine shtick, with some extra bigotry to boot.
Other thing, though. I posted something on Bluesky about the back and forth on whether Zootopia and Spiderverse really are copaganda. I got some great insight into both that are making me reexamine them, so I might write a new post touching on those.
For a TLDR: I missed a lot about Spiderverse (much to both my delight and embarrassment). While it does have a generally positive perception of cops through the various Spidermens’ brave, by-the-book cop family members, I received a lot of great insight pointing out the ways in which it makes critiques of policing as opposed to lauding it. I want to rewatch the movies for myself before doing a deeper analysis into it, but I do want the correction on the record that it’s not quite as cut and dry as I’d presented it.
As for Zootopia…I don’t know. I still think it’s copaganda, though to be fair, it does have some critiques of policing as a system.
The main issue is the protagonist being a well-meaning bunny cop who successfully puts away an unassuming politician who is secretly corrupt and evil. Let’s be real, that shit does not happen in real life, and certainly not thanks to the cops.
There was also a scrapped version of the movie that would have been, in my opinion, a much better commentary on bigotry and policing. That, though, is another thing I will dive into in another post.
For now, thought I’d share an update because I saw some stuff on the above pieces of media (TCAP and EWU) that I thought would be important examples to demonstrate the damage this kind of copaganda can do, and how quickly it can get more radical and boot-licky over time.
I liked them both. I’m ashamed to admit that, but it’s the truth.
You live and you learn!
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If you liked this post, check out the first one!
The fact that there are BLM references in the NYC of Spider-Verse is something that’s been bugging me since my first viewing. It shows that Miles’ dad is not part of a mythical NYPD that actually protects and serves but, is instead part of a normal, real world PD.