Loading ...Justice (Perverted Or Not!) Is Blind
By Evan ~ May 29th, 2007. Filed under: rant, world news.
To be perfectly honest with you, I had nothing to talk about today. Just when I was about to give up and start complaining about music and movies, a gift was sent from the heavens in the form of an exclusive from The Smoking Gun. In a just published story, we learn that a former producer of NBC’s “To Catch A Predator” states that she was fired from the network after she complained that the show violated “numerous journalistic ethical standards.” She charges the vigilante group Perverted Justice with “[trolling] for and [luring] targets into its sting,” hiding “complete transcripts from its trolling operations,” and receiving enough money from NBC to “lie to trick targets.”
A few months ago I wrote a short piece about what I felt was the unethical nature of To Catch A Predator. I made no bones about my feelings towards the criminals (I referred to them as deranged scum), but that did not prevent me from seeing a very large gap of information in the morality and legality of NBC’s practices in tandem with Perverted Justice. One claim in the lawsuit against NBC is that the supposed chat transcripts provided by the vigilante group cannot be independently verified. That statement makes me wonder about the validity of my theory that sting targets were being induced to commit a crime. I also raised concern about what I saw as “a TV show expressly interested in inflicting bonus punishment on a person and their family.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the ex-NBC producer alleges that sting targets were “led into additional acts of humiliation…in order to enhance the comedic effect of the public exposure of these persons.”
Hopefully NBC will come under further fire and remove this program from their schedule. Yeah, these people are severely fucked up and they continue to commit what I believe is the most despicable human act imaginable, but there are other ways to inform the public, warn parents, and protect children. Community watchdog groups or vigilantes, even if acting in the public interest, should still act in accordance with the law, and I’m pretty sure that NBC and Perverted Justice (though their intentions are admirable) should be held culpable for disobeying basic broadcasting ethics.
Here’s The Smoking Gun’s article on NBC’s Perverted Justice.
- I finished reading “A Separate Reality,” and am looking for another book to start. If anyone wants to make a recommendation, please feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment below. It would be even better if someone lent me a book, because that way I don’t have to actually pay for it. After all, I’m living on $50 a week.
