NBC - DID NBC'S DATELINE INVENT STATISTIC ON PREDATORS?

NBC's Dateline , which had claimed in a series of reports about online sex predators that at any given time 50,000 predators are lurking on the Internet, has now indicated that it cannot support that figure. Interviewed on National Public Radio's On the Media, Dateline correspondent Chris Hansen, who fronted a series of hour-long Dateline features titled "To Catch a Predator," said, "We used [the 50,000 figure] in the first two stories, and we haven't used it in the last three." Today's (Friday) New York Post observed that the figure was cited last month by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who attributed it to Dateline. The NBC series, a ratings success, has touched off considerable controversy for hiring a private group to pose as sexually active teenagers online and lure their marks to a private home where they are confronted by Hansen on camera and are then arrested as they leave.

02/06/2006