I'm Chris Hanson with Dateline NBC...

"To catch a predator" is the only good show on Dateline. They might as well just rename it to "Rapeline" and run episodes of this show non-stop.

That's some gorgeous looking news reporting right there. Dateline NBC's got nothing on these guys.

Interesting problem. It makes it tougher to compare when you're talking about such an enormous area with such a small amount of people. That same thing seems to happen when people talk about Alaska and you want to say, "well of course you have a high crime rate when you have ten people policing 100,000 square miles with two or three roads."

SBS's Dateline program just did a piece on Julian Assange, catching up with him in Norway.



Australia's status as a free Western democracy is steadily being eroded. If this proposed internet filter is allowed to pass, our citizens are set to lose a great amount of their currently enjoyed civil liberties. The guise of 'protecting our children against child pornography' is being used to silence political dissent and freedom of the press.

We are in trouble as a nation.

I'm not witch hunting him, but ASIDE FROM the extortion later on, there's the original crime where this guy willingly got into a hot tub with a minor. Seems like he knew she was a minor.

That's not cool.

If you ask me, this touches perfectly on a knife edge that i've always thought about when i think of "paedophilia".

I once watched a program where louis theroux visited a centre for paedophiles. They stayed inside this purgatorial estate until they were "re-habilitated" and there was no time limit on their incarceration. The only people who had EVER been released (i think? hazy memory) were people who had voluntarily gone through chemical castration.

I was in a state of pure shock after watching the video. My utter disgust and contempt for their dispicable act was met with my utter vexation that these people would be held indefinitely until some people who claimed themselves experts decided that they were "cured". And usually only when they'd metaphorically chopped their gonads off.

I didn't know what to think. Did i feel sorry for these people who now had no presence in the world, who had no rights and literally a purgatorial non-existance? Or did i feel glad that they'd been taken out of the world for something that is unthinkable to any normal person?

And to be honest, i still don't know. But i think this discussion is fuelled by that uncertainty. Some people may also not know what they feel. Some people think "This guy shouldn't have his life ruined by getting into a hot tub with a minor and not doing anything," some people think "Holy shit this guy knowingly got into a hot tub with a minor."

Do you think if chris hansen got a guy to sit in a hot tub with a 15 year old girl and then the guy said "but i wasn't going to do anything!" that we'd believe him? No, of course we wouldn't.

So what if chris hansen had popped up when this guy had been getting into the hot tub, and said "hi, i'm chris hansen from dateline nbc?" His life would have been terribly terribly different.

So exactly how many future lawmakers and "citizens of good standing and public service" has chris hansen put behind bars for non-crimes similar to this man? Should the crowd in this video be applauding the people we've seen on "to catch a predator"...?

There are several good comments following that article. I particularly enjoyed the one basically saying that the militant Christians have become Lucifer's army.

>> ^Yogi:
Sorry forgot about the link to the expose.
http://www.texasobserver.org/dateline/he-who-casts-the-first-stone

Sorry forgot about the link to the expose.

http://www.texasobserver.org/dateline/he-who-casts-the-first-stone

>> ^burdturgler:

I don't know griefer .. starting to lose hope in you man.


I dont know, burd. I am inclined to agree. And the fact that he did it in a neighborhood with children is preposterous. But i really do think the way in which this guy exposed him was wrong. Just as much as I find it difficult to watch something like dateline, so do I cringe at stuff like this. It simply doesn't feel right.

>> ^dannym3141:
40 mph? Really?


In the US, roughly half of all accidents occur at speeds faster than 40 MPH, the other half occur at speeds slower than that. 40 MPH is essentially "the middle of the road" in that respect. Also, most accidents are "offset impact," which this video illustrates - they type of accident most likely to occur when one car drifts the oncoming traffic lane. This means that the force cannot spread out evenly over the front of the vehicle.

This is basically the same test they show on Dateline when they do the Insurance Commission/Consumer Reports car safety tests.

I don't see anyone walking away from an accident at any speed in this car. It looks like the engine block would tear your legs from your body. You can clearly see the dummy's head hit the steering column with neck-destroying force.

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=5585 ABC news Primetime Live faked poor meat handling prices at food lion.

Dateline NBC General Motors investigation: GM placed incendiary devices in GM pickup truck to ensure gas tanks would explode.

And then, there's always the news show who put a non functioning revolver in a toy box in a pre school to see what the kids would do when they found it.

I don't seen any pattern of credibility in these types of reports but they don't get paid to be right. Oh well.

>> ^burdturgler:
I suppose ridiculing and insulting someone's beliefs must a sign of heightened enlightenment.


Zing! Although to be fair, I think shuac was just as stunned as I was deedub81 didn't end that sentence "for the punishment they are going to get in prison." Because I think we all know what's waiting for these guys once they get inside...

I'm not really sure what to make of these guys. Are they criminals or mentally ill? Either way I don't think prison is going to snap them out of it.

Back on topic. Wasn't there some lawsuit about these takedowns? I think a number of these guys sued saying that Dateline basically told the police to "make it look good for TV," which resulted in unnecessary roughness in a lot of the arrests.

EDIT: And I don't find this funny. Sorry, no upvote while the comedy tag is still there. Also surprised by no * actionpack.

>> ^rychan:

Would you say this is "How Muslims Are Treated In The USA"?
Imagine if a naive Muslim chances upon this page. Do you think the title may be misleading?

The title is a bit misleading, because it doesn't indicate that this is a contrived situation. More of a social experiment. But anyway, that's not a criticism of the video segment, that's a criticism of who-ever posted it to sift.


Very fair. The chosen title is in bad taste.

See comments about this video by Muslims, they've been as misled as most of you.

I also discovered that Dateline also employs provocateur tactics. link to another questionable "investigation"

I felt just as disgusted as the rest of you at the senseless racism and bigotry shown at the beginning. But I'm also troubled by that style of reporting. Of course we were outraged, that was the whole point of the report. A perfect example of this trend is Dateline NBC, it's nothing but outrage mongering. Three times a week you're shown that all repairmen will screw you, that your grandparents will be swindled by fast talking conmen, that everyone is a theif given the right opportunity and that your children will be molested by the internet.

Those are all important topics, and there are real concerns behind them. But the way they're reported is designed to entertain and enrage. And never seems to focus on useful statistics, or the efforts being made to address the problem. Also, the sheer ammount of fucking with strangers against their will seems unethical. Serously, no need to make teenage girls cry with your staged confrontations.

On the other hand it was really nice to see ordinary people defending a muslim woman. But I still don't like the minipulative and unscientific nature of these real life experements.

this is up there with the wereon2u campaign, which has more legitimacy but their ads are ridiculous, http://www.weron2u.ca/home/ watching them is like being accused of appearing on dateline with chris hansen