By skyforbes In the context of the early 2000s, To Catch a Predator raised awareness of online sexual abuse against children, which was a very new concept that many people did not know about at the time. The show was sensationalized and scummy in a way that many shows of the time were, which I assumed everyone has learned by now; many recent documentaries have already exposed this (e.g., Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action; Dark Side of Reality TV; Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser).
Why, of all the copaganda shows that exploit crime suspects and parade police around like heroes (e.g., Cops, First 48, Body Cam, Live PD, On Patrol: Live), and reality shows that exploit people in dark situations or with serious afflictions (e.g., My 600 lb. Life, Hoarders, Intervention, 19 Kids and Counting, Breaking Amish) does the director decide to single out To Catch a Predator as particularly unethical? It shares the same problematic nature as any show in the same category. If anything, the shows I listed (many of which are still on the air), exploit much more vulnerable populations than To Catch a Predator did. Cops and similar shows primarily prey on people in under-resourced communities who have turned to crime in order to survive. 19 Kids and Counting even capitalized on children in an abusive, religious family environment. Conversely, the man who shot himself on To Catch a Predator (the event that most point to as a sign of the show’s depravity) was a very privileged man in a powerful political position, who still decided to try and take advantage of a child.
The director of Predators heavily focused on one example of Chris Hanson’s most recent show during which he unfairly ruined an 18-year-old’s life, while glossing over the vast majority of caught predators being over the age of 20. These predators included many school teachers, religious leaders, parents, and others who had already ruined countless children’s lives. If I had to guess, the show’s average age of predator is likely somewhere between 25-40. The documentary’s only effort to present any sort of nuanced view of To Catch a Predator’s ethics is at the very beginning, when they play a disgusting phone call between one of the predators and a decoy from the show.
The director’s interview with Chris Hanson felt very imbalanced and with a strong, predetermined agenda in mind. The segment started off with unfair Michael Moore-esque tactics clearly trying to portray Chris as a vain phony, with shots of him getting his makeup done, doing several takes to get his lines right, and showing merch from his show. All entertainers and journalists do these things – it looks embarrassing when anyone does it. Using similar unfair tactics, once the interview ends, the director decides to show 5 minutes of Chris walking back to his car. I think this was to point out the fact that he has a driver, which makes him a rich phony?
During the interview itself, Chris Hanson cites in his defense that he is often stopped on the street from survivors of childhood sexual assault thanking him for his work. The director responds with something along the lines of, “Well, I’m an SA survivor and I don’t think your methods are productive.” Revealing his past abuse during this point of disagreement felt like an attempt at a “gotcha” moment, but of course many survivors will not have the exact same opinion on To Catch a Predator, and this doesn’t give the director’s opinion any more weight.
Chris Hanson is then confronted with the fact that, though he asks the question “Why?” and “Help me understand why you’re doing this” to every predator on his show, that he is not really interested in the answer to that question. The director asks the loaded question, “You seem to always ask ‘why?’ Have you ever figured out ‘why?’” Chris responds by clearly listing out three types of culprits of online sex crimes and why they tend to commit them (i.e., porn/sex addicts whose unlimited access to the internet and children on the computer has taken over their lives, opportunists who feel they are unable to find anyone their own age, and true pedophiles who have an innate attraction and compulsion to abuse children). The director responds with something along the lines of, “Well, if there are such a wide variety of offenders, then why are they all punished in the same manner?”
To me, this sounds more like a criticism of the justice system in America, rather than To Catch a Predator. We all know the justice system is totally broken and designed to punish, not rehabilitate, people. This is a problem across all areas of crime. Chris even admits that the system is flawed, but he believes that these people do need to be punished, and this is the system we have. It is bothersome to me that the director’s arguments are that To Catch a Predator oversimplifies a complex issue, all while presenting his own message of how unethical the show was in the exact, black-and-white same manner. I keep reading reviews saying that this documentary was a thoughtful, measured examination of the show (Rotten Tomatoes currently has Predators at 99% across 67 critics’ reviews), but I struggled to find the nuance that everyone seems to be talking about.
I guess I’m mostly wondering, in an industry full of unethical, exploitative content, what is the benefit of narrowing in on To Catch a Predator to dissect as a negative force in entertainment and journalism? If the point of this documentary is to have more empathy for sexual predators (which I do think is a major theme of the film), I think it is important to not stop the argument at, “What this show did was wrong.” The movie was over an hour-and-a-half long with a lot of redundant padding (I don’t think I learned a single thing from the ethnographer they gave so much screen time to). They could have used this time to delve deeper into what proposed solutions we have to the very rampant, under-addressed issue of sex crimes against children.
No one is arguing that public humiliation is the perfect form of deterrence against online predators, but I’d argue that it’s better than nothing (which is what we would have without shows like To Catch a Predator). The disappointment I felt after watching this reminded me why I enjoyed Louis Theroux’s A Place for Pedophiles so much. That documentary had a truly nuanced view, with equal parts disgust for the crimes, empathy for the offenders, and acknowledgment that we are yet to find a good solution for the complex issue of child sexual abuse.