NBC Dateline's "Catch a Predator" Series Pays Cops and Undercover "Victims": Apropos to my earlier DefCon story about the NBC Dateline producer who was caught at the hacker conference with a hidden camera in her purse trying to 'Catch a Hacker,' Esquire magazine has an exposé in its September issue that looks at ethical issues around Dateline's ratings-magnet series, 'To Catch a Predator.' (You can also read a transcript of the Esquire writer's contentious interview with 'Catch a Predator' host, Christ Hansen.)

If you don't have time to read the whole article, the San Francisco Chronicle also has a story out today listing some of those ethical issues. 'To Catch a Predator' relies on the work of anonymous members of a group that calls itself Perverted Justice who pose online as underage children to lure pedophiles and others into online sexual chats with 'minors' and set up meetings with them at locations where Dateline cameras can swoop in to catch them on tape. At least one suspect who didn't show up for the arranged meeting killed himself as cops and Dateline moved in to seize him at his home instead.

According to the Chronicle article, NBC pays Perverted Justice for its work and also pays or reimburses cops who participate in the episodes. The program also freely hands over its videotapes to prosecutors.

Paying sources for information and giving police and prosecutors notes and tapes of interviews with story subjects violate the tenets of ethical journalism. There are also problems with prosecuting the cases that come out of Dateline's sweeps-week-friendly episodes. As the article explains, prosecutors were unable to pursue cases against 23 men who were caught in Dateline's snare in Texas.

Concerns about NBC's tactics were raised in a lawsuit filed by one of Dateline's own former employees:

In May, in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed by a former 'Dateline' employee, Marsha Bartel outlined a series of ethical misgivings about 'To Catch a Predator' that some media critics have raised themselves. Among other things, Bartel argues that paying Perverted Justice for its services gives the group 'a financial incentive to lie to and trick targets of its sting.' She's not the only ex-employee, incidentally, to discuss the show's underlying methods. Former 'Dateline' anchor Stone Phillips has said that in many of the contrived Internet chats, 'the decoy is the first to bring up the subject of sex.'

Bartel's assertions about the relationship between NBC and law enforcement are more disturbing. Contrary to the network's claim of 'parallel investigations' with police, she says, 'Dateline' pays or otherwise reimburses law enforcement officials, trades its video services for information and for dramatically staged arrests, and illegally provides video feeds to prosecutors.

A piece in the forthcoming September Esquire turns the spotlight on the problem in graphic and grim detail. (Esquire, like The Chronicle, is a Hearst publication.) In telling the story of a Dateline 'Predator' operation that ended in a man's suicide by gunshot when the police stormed his house with NBC's cameras poised outside, writer Luke Dittrich portrays a network hungry for real-life drama at any cost and a Murphy, Texas, police department only too avid to play along. When the man, a former district attorney named Bill Conradt Jr., failed to show up at the trysting house as arranged, Esquire shows, NBC pressed police to obtain a warrant for his arrest and force a confrontation at his own home. The last footage shot was of the SWAT team loading Conradt's body into the ambulance.

In a mordant footnote to the tragedy, Dittrich reports that because of various problems, including crime venue problems and the lack of proper warrants, the county's district attorney was unable to prosecute any of the 23 men arrested in Murphy during the Texas 'Dateline' encampment.

While NBC doesn't comment on future 'To Catch a Predator' episodes, the network plainly feels it has established a vital franchise. Spin-offs include 'To Catch a Car Thief,' 'To Catch an ID Thief,' 'To Catch a Con Man' and the ludicrous 'To Catch an i-Jacker.' The latter involves leaving iPods around in public and tracking the people who pick them up. 'So what's the lesson here?' Hansen asked a teenager who was caught and hauled before the cameras on a recent 'Dateline.' 'Don't steal,' he dutifully replied.

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)