Dateline: To catch some bad journalism
Ever watch that show on Dateline where adults are lured to the houses of minors for some sex?
The appeal is obvious. You get to watch shady dudes squirm while Chris Hansen uses his best "gravitas" voice to put them on the spot. You get to watch the cops make a reality-tv style bust – you know, SWAT teams, yelling, and lots of guns being used against small, unarmed, and scared shitless men. Maybe parents get to feel a little safer knowing that Chris Hansen and the Dateline team are putting the bad guys away and keeping their daughter from coaxing old men into bed.
As entertaining as it may be, it's an embarrassment to journalism. More importantly, it's an embarrassment to our legal process.
Cops letting Dateline put a suspect on television before they make the arrest? Continued public interrogation after an arrest? Not to mention, the old rule against entrapment.
I don't justify the actions of men who have sex with children, but the way these attractive women (posing as teenagers) beg and plead with these men to make them come have sex is just crazy. Men never make sound decisions when they're thinking with their little head.
A surprisingly somewhat balanced report from Fox News:
To Catch a Predator is a perfect example of what we get when views, clicks, and ratings are the forces driving the news. Sure it's entertaining, but is it useful?
The news used to be information that we needed to know. Now it's just entertainment – check that. Infotainment.
The appeal is obvious. You get to watch shady dudes squirm while Chris Hansen uses his best "gravitas" voice to put them on the spot. You get to watch the cops make a reality-tv style bust – you know, SWAT teams, yelling, and lots of guns being used against small, unarmed, and scared shitless men. Maybe parents get to feel a little safer knowing that Chris Hansen and the Dateline team are putting the bad guys away and keeping their daughter from coaxing old men into bed.
As entertaining as it may be, it's an embarrassment to journalism. More importantly, it's an embarrassment to our legal process.
Cops letting Dateline put a suspect on television before they make the arrest? Continued public interrogation after an arrest? Not to mention, the old rule against entrapment.
I don't justify the actions of men who have sex with children, but the way these attractive women (posing as teenagers) beg and plead with these men to make them come have sex is just crazy. Men never make sound decisions when they're thinking with their little head.
A surprisingly somewhat balanced report from Fox News:
"Sexual predators running around, picking up children off the 'Net are not an epidemic … ["To Catch a Predator"] focuses on the equivalent of a sexual straw man, turning the stranger-predator into the 'epidemic,'" said Pierre Tristam, a columnist at the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida, who recently wrote a controversial article on the popular "Dateline" series and says the shows epitomize "tabloid pulp."
"[NBC's predator series] should quit borrowing from the shabby techniques of reality TV and return to the ethics and demands of journalism," Tristam said.
To Catch a Predator is a perfect example of what we get when views, clicks, and ratings are the forces driving the news. Sure it's entertaining, but is it useful?
The news used to be information that we needed to know. Now it's just entertainment – check that. Infotainment.
