Written by Anthony Burch

Though it's pretty hard to root for the pedophile in a typical Dateline installment of To Catch a Predator, Defamer reports that NBC is making it that much easier.

 

Ex-NBC Producer Marsha Bartel claims she was wrongfully fired after criticizing the legal and ethical problems present in the way the Predator installments were produced. Firstly, NBC does not personally verify the chat logs with the supposed pedophiles; that job is left to an outside company calling itself Perverted Justice -- a company that completely fails to realize the irony of its own name. Considering NBC pays a great deal of money to Perverted Justice in exchange for Internet pedophiles, Bartel says that such a relationship encourages Perverted Justice to lie and coerce people into coming onto the show.

 

Additionally, Perverted Justice goes so far as to lead potential marks into humiliating behavior, such as undressing on camera, simply to make the moment Chris Hansen finally enters the room that much more awkward/hilarious/entertaining.

 

Bartel goes on to condemn NBC's decision to cover up the immature behavior of certain law enforcement officials present during the taping of these segments. According to Bartel, some officers were "goofing off by waving rubber chickens in the faces of sting targets while forcing them to the ground and handcuffing them."

 

Read that again.

 

Waving. Rubber chickens. In the faces. Of sting targets.

 

WHY? Why was a rubber chicken present on set? If there wasn't a rubber chicken already there, does that mean one of the cops personally brought it to the sting with him? Did he bring it intentionally, just so he could wave it in front of a pedophile's face? And if so, why just wave it in front of his face? Can you think of a more innocuous thing to do with a rubber chicken? Why not smack him around with it, or shove it up his wazoo? What kind of cop uses a rubber chicken for humiliation? Remember the old days, when they just beat the shit out of criminals?

 

Either way, it's a difficult thing to debate: on the one hand, NBC's business practices in this case are dishonest and, often, outright sleazy. On the other hand...well, there's only so much you can do to coerce a guy into having sex with a 13-year-old if he doesn't already want to do it himself.