DON”T these guys watch TV?
Guess not, because NBC News’ “Dateline” is back in the kiddie perv business this week with a new episode of its disturbing cyber-sex sting series, “To Catch a Predator.”
This Friday’s will be the first new episode to be filmed since a Texas county district attorney dropped all charges against 24 men caught on the show during a 2006 taping.
But the show has an undeniable appeal among viewers.
“It’s something that has struck a chord with people,” correspondent Chris Hansen says of the series. “It’s just one of those things that for whatever their reasons, people will watch it if its offered.”
Critics have called the show a form of entrapment – and law-enforcement people are bothered that the program is produced with civilian volunteers posing as underage kids.
This week, a former NBC reporter, John Hockenberry – dropped by the network two years ago and now a teacher at MIT – described “Predator” a “highly rated pile of programming debris.”
Even as NBC tries to ignore the flak, it realizes the shows are getting more difficult to produce because of the publicity.
Hansen says that he is not sure if there will be more “Predator” episodes after this – although it is likely, he believes.
“Like every other project we do, when finish we discuss how and if we can move it forward in the future.”
This week, seven alleged pedophiles are shown being arrested in Bowling Green, Ky. during a sting which was filmed over several nights last October.
Among those caught was a man who claimed to be an Indiana police officer who drove 350 miles to meet with and allegedly have sex with a girl he believed was just 13 years old.
As it turned out Michael J. Patterson, 24, had been thrown out of the police academy years before, but had a 9mm gun hidden in his car. As he was being arrested during the sting, he ran back into the house where NBC was taping the show. Police tried to shoot him with a Taser gun, but missed. He was taken down inside the living room in full view of several NBC News cameras.
“It was quite dramatic,” Hansen says.
On the series, “Dateline” works with an activist group called Perverted Justice to run stings in which adults, posing as children in Internet chat rooms, lure alleged pedophiles to a residential home.
Once they arrive at the home, they’re “busted” by Hansen and a camera crew and then arrested by local police.
Among those caught during the a 2006 sting in Murphy, Texas was a prosecutor from a neighboring county, who committed suicide when police showed up to arrest him.