NBC’s To
Catch a Predator takes another hit in
Esquire
Spokeswoman
denies manipulation allegations
2007
A TV
news organization often criticized for ethical lapses takes another hit in the
September issue of Esquire magazine.
Luke
Dittrich’s story says the staff of Dateline NBC’s To
Catch a Predator manipulated and controlled law enforcement officers
during a sting in Murphy in north
Editor
David Granger is calling on NBC to cancel To Catch a Predator before
someone else dies.
“The
show puts aside the need for due process,” Granger said in a recent interview.
(Esquire, like the Houston Chronicle, is a Hearst publication.) “Whether these
men are convicted in a court of law or not, they’re convicted in the court of
public opinion. Our country has not succeeded and prospered for two centuries
by exploiting people who have no recourse. It’s just wrong.”
Since
2004, there have been 11 editions of To Catch a Predator. The legwork
is done by a group called Perverted-Justice.com, which is paid an undisclosed
sum by NBC. Members of the online group — sometimes described as watchdogs,
sometimes as vigilantes — pose as underage teens or decoys on the Web. When
they get a nibble from a suspected pedophile, they try to lure him to a house
rented by NBC and rigged with hidden cameras.
Once
inside this trap, adult actors who look years younger than they are greet the
suspects and disappear. Then host Chris Hansen appears on the scene to take the
men to task. It’s riveting TV, no question. The cameras zoom in as the men
realize they’re caught and about to be arrested.
Many
would argue that justice is being served in the very public “gotcha.” Some of
the men come bearing condoms and booze. Their intent is clear.
The
case of prosecutor Louis Conradt last fall was somewhat different. He did commit
a crime when he communicated in a sexually explicit way online with someone
pretending to be a minor. As a prosecutor, Conradt knew his
The
Esquire investigation shows, however, that after two weeks of vidchat, Conradt stopped communicating with the actor who
was pretending to be 13. He didn’t answer the decoy’s computer messages, and
soon stopped taking his phone calls.
For
whatever reason, however, the Dateline staffers decided not to wait
for Conradt to come to them. Instead, they urged police to arrest the
prosecutor at home. The magazine article describes the police camping out on
his front lawn, then breaking into the house with a
search warrant riddled with mistakes.
Officers
saw Conradt as they crept down a hallway. According to their reports, he
retreated into a room off the hall and said loudly enough to be heard that he
wasn’t going to hurt anyone. Moments later, he shot himself in the head.
Esquire’s
Granger does not endorse, protect or defend pedophiles. At the same time, “exploitation
in any form is offensive,” he said. “Predators don’t deserve to be exploited
for the sake of entertainment and possibly, ratings.”
Most
TV news magazines have struggled to attract and keep audiences in the past few
years. To Catch a Predator, however, does well. The average viewership
has been 8.1 million viewers.
In
the Conradt case, Granger said, the TV staff worked so closely with local law
enforcement officials, they practically were running the operation.
Collin
County District Attorney John Roach echoed that thought when he told Esquire
the police involved in the Murphy sting were manipulated like potted plants.
It’s
important to have a fire wall between reporters and law enforcement officials,
said Thomas Donaldson, professor of ethics at The Wharton School of the
NBC’s
Hansen was not available for comment. Spokeswoman Jenny Tartikoff defended him
in an e-mail.
“The
notion that Chris Hansen or anyone at Dateline could or would ‘control’
or ‘manipulate’ the actions of law enforcement personnel is preposterous.”
Xavier
Von Erck, director of operations for Perverted-Justice.com, also corresponded
by e-mail: “The idea that anything led to the suicide of Conradt other than his
want to avoid potential penalties for soliciting a 13-year-old boy sexually is
outlandish. We encourage all interested to read the Conradt chat-logs and
verification call recordings. Once you do that, you then immediately know why
Conradt shot himself rather than face the criminal justice system.”
Von
Erck compared the Esquire piece to great crime fiction — with an emphasis on
the word fiction. The reporter, he said, wrote exactly the story he wanted to
write irrespective of the facts in the case.
Since
To Catch a Predator started more than three years ago, 286 men
surfaced in the investigations, and 256 were arrested. At present, only 118 of
those men have either pleaded guilty or been convicted by a judge or jury.
In
In
return, Perverted Justice has lambasted the prosecutors on its Web site, which
is loaded with lewd Internet excerpts.
“It’s
very troubling,” said the writer, Dittrich. “What the show did was muddy the
waters. In the article, I tried to help readers distinguish between TV justice
and real justice.”
Dittrich
acknowledged that he was mesmerized by the show when he watched it, but that he
wasn’t sure To Catch a Predator appealed to viewers’ healthiest or
most noble appetites.
“It
caters to something base in us,” he said. “For some reason we all like to watch
people punished and humiliated.”