Dateline’s To Catch a Predator Is A Honeytrap For Trolls
THE show sees men caught on camera as they arrive at house to have sex with a 13-year-old boy (a 21-year-old actor named Dan Schrack). You can read the whole thing here. So might it be that the pervs knows that the web is full of people pretending to be what they are not and realise Schrack is not 13 but older?
Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator” series has become a target itself for criticism — by 20/20, Esquire, and an online magazine, as well a former producer, a Georgia judge, a local news reporter, and the relatives of two of the show’s targets.
In the news segments, online decoys lure men to a house to meet underaged sex partners — where instead the men are videotaped and arrested. Last year the Washington Post reported that the decoying group received more than $100,000 from NBC after they “hired an agent to negotiate.” The show’s former producer now says Dateline violated “numerous journalistic ethical standards,” and challenges Dateline’s argument that the police are performing a separate, parallel investigation, calling it “a ruse”.
According to a May lawsuit which appears on The Smoking Gun site, former producer Marsha Bartel objects to NBC also purchasing the surveillance systems used by the police, and notes that the network even pays or “indirectly reimburses” law enforcement officials for the stings. Saying this blurs lines between television and law enforcement, she also spills details about the show’s other apparent lapses in journalism. (For example, Dateline’s failing to report the police officers “waving rubber chickens in the faces of sting targets while forcing them to the ground and handcuffing them.”)
Bring on the lions…
Posted: 23rd, August 2007 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
