Sbusa’s Weblog

Dateline February 29, 2008

I saw on the news on Wednesday, 2/27/08, these two reporters arguing about the morality of the show Dateline.  Dateline is a show where they film the process of special police going online and posing as teenage girls to catch sexual predators and then once they are caught, they film the police showing up at the house, busting the guy, taking him down to prison, questioning him with the intent really of humiliating him by reading conversations the predator had with what he thought was a teenage girl and making him admit to the perverted things he said.  I personally love this show and think it’s hilarious, though sometimes really disturbing what these guys say because I know that these are all true stories.   Anyway, apparently there was a recent episode where they targeted a guy, and upon arriving at his house he flipped out and threatened to kill himself and then apparently went through with it to save himself the humiliation.

I heard the first reporter state the case and voice her disgust at the lengths the media would go to for what she called “good television”.  She said that the guys running the show basically heard this guy’s suicide threats and thought “man, this will make great t.v.” and rushed to follow through with the episode and then the guy really did kill himself.  The second reporter completely disagreed with this statement and basically said, “This isn’t Jerry Springer; this is Dateline.”  He was arguing that these are real sexual predators and that the guy was receiving the consequences of his actions, and how he chose to respond to them is not the media’s fault.  The woman argued that he should have had the right to an attorney or something and the man refuted that he did in fact have the right to an attorney but he chose to act rashly and kill himself.  The guy was very unsympathetic and sort of kept saying “boo hoo” over all of the woman’s statements, yet I do think he had a point.

After I saw this I planned on bringing it up in class, but as we’re sort of focusing on a stead fast topic right now, I decided to blog it out.   This is a philosophical issue.  How do we deal with someone who has so severely violated moral values?  This is a sexual predator that preyed on thirteen and fourteen-year-old girls.  Had this guy not committed suicide, there would have been no News report questioning as to whether it is right to go to the lengths of humiliating this guy on national television rather than going through the whole process of arrest and conviction without the cameras.  One good thing to be said about this show is that it does not film mere suspects of these crimes; by the time these guys make the show they are in fact proven to be sexual predators.

I think that this show is a great way of exposing how twisted these sexual predators actually are.  I have always known obviously that sexual predators are out there on the internet, but I have been pretty shocked by some of the things I have learned on this show.  For instance, I have seen episodes where a married couple was in on luring this girl to their house, and it wasn’t just a forty-year-old man that lives at home with his mom.  By watching this show, you are exposed to how normal these predators may look to the rest of society at first glance at their lives.  This show can be funny and is made with a twist of entertainment rather than just a normal News story, which attracts more viewers and thereby creates more awareness.  I think that this show is a clever way to tune people into what’s really out there and to advise parents to really monitor who their teenagers are talking to on the internet and meeting places.  I honestly don’t think that the people running the show were hoping that this guy’s suicide threats were genuine, and though perhaps that could have been better dealt with, I agree with the male news reporter that this guy deserved the humiliation as a consequence of his actions and it was his choice to choose suicide over accepting the consequences of his actions.  I don’t think that the show should be demeaned at all for what happened on that episode because I think that the producers’ intent is more than just “making good television”.