When you think of reality television, normally you think of situational experiences where people are cast to take part in the situation. The script isn't written until the action happens.
Dateline NBC started a show segment several years ago and titled it “To Catch A Predator.” Hands down, this has to be the realest form of reality television.
The premise of this show is to lure an adult into meeting an underage teenager home alone. This is done by having a decoy pose as a young child in a chat room to lure an adult into meeting them alone somewhere. The situational experience is the meeting, the casting is the luring. The script writes itself as the decoy and adult chat. This really is reality tv.
Many argue that this is entrapment. While it has been argued by both the law and NBC that it is not, I still feel strongly that it is, at least, incredibly unethical.
Don't get me wrong here, I totally think these men are in the wrong. Many of the men admit it is illegal. Many of these men suggest what they are doing is wrong. It is the decoy who encourages that it is alright and that they are safe. Why is it that the adult is always the one suffering the defamation, yet the decoy is the one trolling and “whoring” themselves around in the chat?
Who is to say that these men are not coming to abuse the child, or to take advantage of the child, but to teach them a very valuable lesson – that they could be hurt by doing what they are doing and that they need to stop immediately. Who is to say that these men were even going to engage in sexual acts with these children? You can't take a prostitute down until she's made clear that shes being paid for sex, so why can you take a man down for meeting a child somewhere without any signs of intentions? Of course this is not true for all of the cases, but in many instances there is no sign of sexual intent.
Should the adult be to blame simply because they are “older and wiser?” Should the child take the fall because they knew what they were getting into and lured in the adult? Should NBC be blamed as well because they only present one side of the argument? I'd like to see someone flip the script and set up an adult decoy to lure in a child. Then I'm sure everyone would hear (and see) how unethical this whole process was.
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3 comments:
I think the blame falls on both parties, but in the case of "To Catch a Predator," blame invariably falls on the decoy. Like female cops who enact sting operations to lure johns (also entrapment), the chat decoy is venerated by the public and law enforcement officials as a hero. This is strange, since they are not actually catching a crime in progress so much as creating one themselves.
I like the question you pose at the end. I have seen the show, and had several discussions revolving around the ethics of it all. But I had never thought of how it would be if it were the other way around. Can you imagine how many people would LOSE IT if they set it up to lure the children? Oh man, I think you're on to something brilliant!
Totally great question and It amazes me that so many people watch it but no-one has brought up the ethics issue about this show, but the idea is that the adult has experience and "Knows Better" but they have been lured like a hunter finding its prey.
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