NBC - CJR CRITICIZES DATELINE PREDATOR SERIES

The Columbia Journalism Review has run excerpts from online chats between Perverted Justice personnel posing as minors and their marks, who later wound up facing cameras on NBC's Dateline as part of the news magazine's "To Catch a Predator" series. In each of the chats, the Perverted Justice decoy appears to take the initiative in proposing a sexual liaison. The magazine points out that "as a legal matter, the enticements offered by the decoys are of little importance to the police ... but journalistically it looks a lot like crossing the line from reporting the news to creating the news." CJR concludes that competition from reality shows has altered the face of news magazines. It quotes a former NBC News producer as saying, "About the only thing [NBC programming executives] really want newsmagazines to do now is crime. ... If it's not crime, they don't think they can sell it. The traditional investigative reporting on shows like Dateline, or 48 Hours, or Primetime Live is no more." (60 Minutes was cited as a notable exception.)

01/02/2007