The Press Box - The September Issue: ‘Primetime’ and the Age of ‘To Catch a Predator.’ Plus: The Latest on the Trump Ban!

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Today on The Press Box, it’s the September Issue. Bryan and David give updates on the banned outlets from the White House and the awkward situation surrounding Graham Bensinger and Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald, as well as their reaction to the latest trailer for David O. Russell’s ‘Madden.’ Next, they share their opinions on the new movie ‘Primetime,’ starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, host of the popular TV series ‘To Catch a Predator’ from 2004. They discuss how the show grew from a segment on 'Dateline NBC' to a full-fledged TV series, the early-2000s era of sensational TV programming, and the legacy of ‘To Catch a Predator’ and Chris Hansen since the show ended (32:32). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producers: Jon Jones and Jessie Lopez Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to by Uber Eats. You can get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Sorry, you can't get a beach deliver, but you can get a peach. A canoe, no. Shampoo, yes. A rocket? No way. Chocolate, yes way. It's everything you need, including $10 off your first grocery order with code,

anything 30-30. Get almost, almost anything with Uber Eats. Order now. Order a minimum of $30 required, valid on grocery, convenience, retail, specialty foods, or flower delivery orders only, Terms and conditions apply. David? Yes.

A couple of quick updates before we get to the topic of the hour. Number one, CNN journalists and other banned journalists are back in the White House. No longer banned. No longer banned. They were unbanned by a court, but still banned by Trump as of this morning. Now they're back on the White House. House grounds. Apparently, their badges work again.

They didn't have to get new badges. They just flipped them back on. It all felt like an HR problem. Yeah. My badge doesn't seem to be working. Mm-hmm. The funniest part of this story is this. So Trump had banned three outlets from the White House, including Politico.

CNN, MS now, and Politico. According to Oliver Darcy over its status, the White House sent a letter to Politico, citing some Politico stories that the outlet had published, that the White House said used anonymous sources and threatened national security. In other words, here is why we are banning you from the White House grounds because you published these stories. Well, one Politico story, the White House pointed to, happen to quote, an anonymous senior administration official.

We know how Trump feels about anonymous sources, right? Yeah. Well, that official, Oliver Darcy reports, was actually J.D. Vance, who was giving an authorized briefing to reporters. So this was not some scurrilous deep state source. You barely get that out. This was the vice president doing Donald Trump's bidding. Yeah, I was going to say it wasn't even J.D. Vance, like, acting of his own accord, as he has been wanted to do lately. this was a deliberate White House action.

Yes, they sent Vance out to brief the reporters anonymously. Politico Prince's story, and the White House says, we are banning you in part because of anonymous sources like this one, which happens to be the vice president. And if we can continue the K-Fabe here for just one more second, J.D. Vance, this time on the record, blasted Politico,

saying Politico is as anti-Trump as Breitbart was anti-E Obama or anti-Biden. It's a good week to keep up some charades. This is item number two for you, David. Do you see the whole thing with Seahawks coach Mike McDonald? Yeah, I was just reading up on it. So Graham Bensinger is a guy who hosts a show called In-Depth. I am guessing you have never watched that show,

and many of the people that were diving on this story have never watched that show. but it's an interview show and he interviewed Mike McDonald he puts out a clip that has kind of like a wide angle and you could see somebody futzing with a camera and you could see

the lights above him and McDonald so clearly it felt like something that was happening before the interview started and in this clip McDonald was telling a story about getting fan-made videos

from Broncos training camp. So stuff just people shot there. And using those fan-made videos to figure out some of Sean Payton's plays. Yeah. And how that made Sean Payton very angry. Now, this was in a longer interview, which was done on camera,

done, you know, between the lines, as it were. But when this clip got cut out, everybody went bonkers. Yeah. Because they're like, wait a second, first of all, what am I looking at? Yeah. Is this like a weird peeping Tom who's finding something? What has happened here?

Later we found out that according to the Seahawks, well, he didn't know he was being recorded. This clip was in that interesting gray area where as far as we know, nobody said the words off the record. Right. What I am about to say cannot be used. but it was assumed that because the cameras were not officially rolling, it would not be used. Right. Isn't that a fascinating little niche within journalism? Sure.

I mean, it's a very podcast sort of problem, right? Where you're just like you're chatting in the Zoom call or on Riverside and then all of a sudden you're like, wait, should we start recording? You know, but who knows? You could have been recording all along. I think about that all the time because people just start chatting, you know, before. And as soon as the thing's off, you know, here's what I would have said if I could have told the truth. I was like, well, I'm not really sure we've pushed.

Stop yet. It was funny to see people react to this because a lot of people are like, hey, you did Mike McDonald dirty. Mm-hmm. Whether it was officially off the record, putting that out there is kind of dirty pool. Yeah. My reaction was, I hear that, but at the same time, this is a coach who just won the Super Bowl.

Mm-hmm. And he's telling wildly interesting stories while sitting in front of television cameras. Yeah. And he's not saying, hey, don't use this. This is off the record, but he's relying entirely on the discretion of somebody he's probably never met. Yep. And a crew, by the way, Graham Benson is not the only person sitting there, a crew whom he's never met. Yes.

To make sure this information never leaves that studio? Are the people who take it are taking exception to it? I assume they're mostly fans, right? But like, are the people who are taking exception to this? Also, do they also take exception to the usage of the footage in almost literally every documentary you've seen in the past five years of people being miced up and the things they say that are a little bit offhand, you know, offhanded in those moments? You know, this is like a really common technique, right? I mean, and the actual point of it is to show something that feels a little bit, a little bit unscripted, right? But yeah, it does seem like an odd move for a coach to be, you know, just going out there with that stuff, whether or not they were on the record.

Although, I guess this is what we all do to sort of curry favor in our various walks of life. Sure. I mean, I saw some Seattle people, Seattle media people that were upset. Like, I also understand that because it kind of screwed up your beat for a couple of years. You think Mike McDonald's going to be super chatty as soon as the reporters go off without being like, now, guys, this is off the record. And I probably won't say anything anyway because I don't trust any reporters for a while. Well, it also is that great, I mean, that weird like Netherworld where it's like,

now the beat writers kind of have no option but to report on this ad nauseum. But they're always chasing the tale of, of, of, Bessinger or however you say his name like they're never going to Binsinger they're never going to write a piece with that sort of traction that the original thing got so it just feels like

you're trapped in the cycle of nothingness totally and I think this when I hear reporters just directing all their fire at the other reporter like that I'm like are you between the lines kind of person do you believe the only stuff we should hear is stuff that they quote one out there

Mm-hmm. Don't you want to hear as much as you possibly can, as long as it's not gotten through? That's a really weird thing about being a beat reporter now, is that it's more, yeah, you're kind of, you kind of have to be between the lines, you know? There's that the secret handshake is like what governs your employability. Benzinger put out a statement last night where he said he actually sent the full

interview to the Seahawks, including that pre-interview conversation, five days before he posted it on YouTube. So the Seahawks had the interview. I don't know if they clicked the link or not, but they had the interview, at least according to Benzinger. Never said anything.

Finally, a new trailer for the John Madden biopic. Dude, I have never felt weirder about a movie. Before its release, than I feel about Madden, which is directed by David O. Russell. Yeah. Who gave us Three Kings,

I Heart Huckabee's, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle. Mm-hmm. Did you hear John Madden's voice? Yeah. It didn't really sound like the John Madden I remembered. I mean, I'm glad it's not a straight impression. What did it sound like? I mean, it was like a...

It sounded kind of like Woody Hurdardton. Carrollson doing Larry Flint. Yeah. It's more of a humor magazine. I was going to say there's a little bit of like late Marlon Brando in it or like there's a little bit. It's sort of like bane but like baritone, you know, like there's just a sort of like deliberate garblediness of it that that is just sort of funny. It's such a bizarre trailer. I mean, David O. Russell, like it is perfectly David O. Russell.

Right? There's not like he, like, we're trained to sort of, or he's trained us in a beautiful way to sort of throw your expectations out the window when it comes to sort of tone and concepts like sincerity. But in a vacuum, you watch this trailer and you're like, is this satire or not? And it's sort of like it seems very much like it's trying to have it both ways. Right. So it's, you know, like almost every person that you see in the trailer is a comedian. you know, playing or playing the role of someone from the 1980s. Shane Gillis, for instance. So, yeah, it's a, it's, yeah, just really, I mean, I, listen, I can't wait to see it.

And I, and that's, you know, it may be a total cluster fuck and it may be a beautiful work of art. Either way, I'm, I'll be there on opening night. Christian Bale plays Al Davis. Also, I never knew that John Madden was so downbeat. Yeah. I mean, he was coming through the TV screen like the Kool-Aid man. Yeah, but. everything you hear about him in real life is,

when you think about it, it's like much easier to read through the lens of just sort of malaise or borderline depression, you know? Yeah. There are some announcers who are like that that I've talked to offline. Yeah. When the cameras are rolling but not really rolling, let's put it that way.

John Madden was not one of them. It sounded like he did on TV. Yeah. Even when he was taking a press call. Good luck with your story, Brian. That'd be great. Great. The Zoom call starts with the rooms like shrouded in darkness. He's smoking a cigarette, just like, you know, hairs unkempt, and you're like, I were ready to roll.

And he just says, fine, you know, clicks on the light and is suddenly a character. Hey, boom. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, this is a media moment. I cannot wait for this. Oh, so much to say about this. This is going to be a month of press boxes when this comes out.

Even the guy playing Pat Summerall. Yeah. Oh, my God. I'm going to have so much to say about that as well. finally they made a movie about my childhood. It turns out to be David O. Russell's men. All right, coming up on this edition of the press box, it is time for the September issue.

David and I have seen the new movie Prime Time with Robert Pattinson, and we've certainly seen to catch a predator, which is based on. We revisit a strange age in American television. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer! Podcast Network.

Hello Media Consumers, Brian Curtis. David Shoemaker and producer. John Bones Jones. I mean, not Bones Jones. Can you imagine if we subbed in John Bones Jones? That would not be our best edition of this podcast. No, probably would not look or sound as good.

No. David, the movie Primetime comes out tonight. Mm-hmm. It is about an old NBC segment called To Catch a Predator. Yes. The movie stars Robert Pattinson as the real-life correspondent Chris Hansen. Movies directed by Lance Oppenheim.

Let's start broadly. What did you think of prime time? I thought it was fantastic. I mean, kind of similar to the Madden movie. It's one of these movies that you hear about and you're like, but why is it a movie? You know, like, what is this going to be about? I mean, obviously in a general sense, you already know, but like what is it about this? it's going to animate a movie.

And, you know, I think in a very general sense, the best journalism movies, you could say this about a million genres. I mean, you know, I would say this about pro wrestling, too. The best journalism movies are the ones that are least about journalism. You're at least about the act of journalism. This movie was fantastic because it was, it largely took place within the head of Chris Hansen,

the character, Chris Hansen, the degree to which it's, you know, based in reality, I guess, is up to the, the viewer's decision or whatever. But like, but it was, it was an incredible character study. And Robert Pattinson was just, you couldn't look away from him. You know, it was sort of like watching to get your predator. It was, like, incredibly uncomfortable and impossible to look away from. I loved it, too.

It reminded me of the movie Nightcrawler that Jake Gyllenhaul made. a little over decade ago in the sense that it's about the seedy side of the business that we are nonetheless attracted to. And as I was watching it, I was thinking back to the days when you and I shared an apartment. This show was absolutely on

in that apartment, just playing in reruns. And I remember those days because my younger self thought something is wrong with this show to catch a predator. But I was almost attracted to it because it was wrong. Yes.

Same reason you and I watched Jerry Springer or cops, other bits of trashy TV. You almost get something from watching a thing that you feel like you are culturally superior to. Yeah. Like I am slumming in this thing and it's just awful and dirty. perhaps morally compromised, but I will continue to watch this thing. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that's totally right.

I mean, when you think about, I feel like we make these points of comparison a lot on the show, but like, you know, this is not separate from the era of Jerry Springer or, or, you know, Howard Stern TV show or, you know, like, whatever. Like, it's, it's of that. It's certainly a more mass market version of that.

and sometime later, you know, but it's of that same spirit and as far as television goes, certainly feels more akin to that than the news broadly defined, although, and they touch on this a little bit in the film, it's like even in our youth or relative youth, we were aware that like Dateline NBC was not news on the level of the evening news, right, or even 60 minutes or something like that, right?

Like, it always had, Stone Phillips has an incredible role in the movie, but, you know, even he just sort of seems so comical, you know, in his way. And so the whole, the whole dateline, the whole dateline movement was a little bit suspect, and this was just sort of like the furthest extent. This is the end of the archipelago or whatever. It's very well said.

If you miss this particular moment in American television, to catch a predator was part of Dateline NBC, as David said, which was kind of an Amazon Prime Day version of 60 Minutes. There were a lot of those at the time. 48 hours was the Dateline NBC of CBS. Yeah. And then remember that had its own spinoffs like 48 hours mystery? Yes.

There's a lot of spinoffs that are you could spin off from this conversation. I'm sure we'll get to them. But yeah, you're right. And Dateline... Go ahead. No, I was like, Dateline was to your point earlier. Dateline was the one of those shows that I watched when I was in high school and college. Like, not religiously, but like the other ones just seem like old fogy TV to me.

But like Dateline seemed at least a little bit, you know, modern. One of the hosts of Dateline was named Stone Phillips. That was funny at the time and is funny when a Stone Phillips stand-in appears in primetime. Mm-hmm. Show basically covered everything, foreign news, unsolved things, international news, but Dateline also had a very popular segment called to Catch a Predator, hosted by Chris Hanson, who was, would you say, newsman handsome?

Yes. Yeah. That particular kind of handsome. Mm-hmm. Good looking man, you're not a movie star, but you look like a newscaster from the 90s. sort of, yeah, but not like an anchor. He's more like foreign correspondent, handsome, which is sort of interesting given his background and his,

well, in the movie, total lack of foreign correspondent style like metal, right? Yes. He had worked in local news. He made it up to the big network. It's probably important to note that to catch a predator begins when he's in his mid-40s. So here's a guy who's made it to network. That's a thing. But he's part of a pool of correspondence. It's probably indistinguishable to most viewers, even big-time viewers of Dateline NBC. And now he has a thing.

A thing to call his own. Well, he'd previously won what, what did he win for his reportage before that? He had a whole slew of journalism awards. Okay. And which is the reason I bring it up is to say, and you can see how far that got him, which is not very far, right? Like, and now. Far, but not to the point of like recognizability for the broader public. Which is the sort of crux of the whole thing, right?

To what extent are you? So to what extent can news and ratings coexist? You know, to what extent can something call itself the news when it is a, when it is an entertainment? He went to, this is Chris Han. Hansen went to Cambodia in 2003 to do a story about young girls who were being abused by sex tourists. And in that story, he used hidden cameras. And afterward, Hansen thought, what if I did the exact same thing back home in the United States? I used hidden cameras and I captured the pedophiles or alleged pedophiles who are threatening young boys and girls in this country.

So the next year, 2004, to catch a predator is born as a segment on Dateline in BC. Now, if you've never seen this, what was to catch a predator? Well, it was a pedophile sting operation. That's how it was billed. There was an outside group called Perverted Justice. Still around in a much diminished form. And people who worked with perverted justice, I believe there were volunteers, would pose as minors online

to try to catch older men who wanted to prey on minors. Go ahead. Sorry, a little bit hard to parse out probably because we weren't there

at the time, but in, as the according to the movie, which I believe to be true, it was the founders of perverted justice, which was one person in the film, but several founders of preferred justice that were doing most of the drag netting, doing most of the typing online, but they had volunteers who played the underage persons in real life when they got on the phone,

when they, well, you can film the rest. So what they would try to do is get the men who they were talking to online to come to a house in whatever part of the country Dateline was set up in. And the house had been wired and set up with television cameras. And then Dateline, this is what you're talking about, would hire an adult man or woman. Yeah. whom they called a decoy who looked like an underage person

to be part of this sting operation. And the decoy would sometimes get on the phone and talk to the person they'd been, somebody had been chatting with online. The decoy would open the door and show the person into the house. And then this older person comes in, They sit down.

The decoy would often make an excuse to leave the room. And then Chris Hansen, the dateline correspondent, would walk in. And he would utter his famous line, why don't you have a seat to the man from the internet who's now standing there, realizing that this is something very, very different than he anticipated. Yeah. Hanson, would you say, had almost a. smirky expression on his face

during these moments? Yes, very rye sort of persona in the whole thing. Just sort of like, hey, bud, what are you doing here? Yeah. I did not remember this until I saw the movie, but he was holding transcripts

of the internet chats that he would then read to the person who was in the house. Read from memory a lot of the time. too, but despite holding the transcripts, it was a little bit of a prop. But he would just go in and say some of the more lurid, but appropriate for TV, uh, quotes from the transcripts and just be like, you know, just read them out loud in sequence and just like, what do you, well, what do you mean by that, you know? Yeah, there's a lot of like newsman.

Why'd you come here? Help me understand. It was constantly the, the script was a constant search for meaning for behind the nefarious actions, but like never actually in search of a resolution. You know, like you want to keep asking, but you actually don't care about the answer. I don't even know how to describe it. You need the moment. Yeah.

And that comes up in the movie. You know, you need the interview. Because for this whole thing to work, this person who, and again, I will say his alleged to be committing a crime. Yeah. Needs to have this sort of avenging angel come in and be like, I'm sorry, what in the world are you doing here? you give me some answers right now. Yeah. I also wonder, before Chris Hansen became recognizable

and this show became very, because it became very, very recognizable in pop culture. And of course, this later become a meme and other things online. Yeah. I'm just wondering, like, what did the person who was in that house think? Like, here's somebody coming in with a sheet of paper.

I'm like, who in the hell is this? I've seen now the movie and the documentary and gone back in watch World episodes so it all blurs together. but in the, yeah, in the beginning, I think a lot of people thought it was the father of whoever they were coming to meet. Later, there was someone who was under the impression that he was a therapist that was there to help them. You know, like there's a lot of different blanks you could fill in. A lot of the targets, you know, whatever, a lot of the men who found themselves in the house were,

I think in the documentary, they say, had difficulty differentiating, between reality and fantasy. I think you could kind of more broadly say many of them were sort of addled in different ways. So at some point, after questioning them, Chris Hanson would tell the person in the house, you're free to leave or something like that. And the person would think they had been granted this clemency.

Yes, I've learned my lesson. Now I can go. Yeah, I've undergone this strange interrogation, but now I can go and promise never to do this again or whatever they would say, they would walk out of the house and then they would be arrested by what Dateline called the takedown team, which was local cops that knew what was going on, that knew what Dateline was doing, that knew what Perverted Justice was doing, and we're hanging out waiting to see who came to the house. In the film, I think the first time that it

happens, there's a guy in a gully suit, you know, like the full camo, like, you know, predator outfit or whatever that jumps out of a bush. I'm not sure where that was actually used. It kind of feels like it was, but certainly, even at the time, I remember thinking these cops are way too excited about this takedown. Like, you could just say, hands behind your back, sir, but everyone was a tackle. Like, everyone was just like a mob of people running over the one suspect. And that became one of the big criticisms of the show was, there were many, but one was the takedown team was so, was so dramatic. It was a television moment rather than

a moment that would actually be required to arrest somebody. Yeah. In that situation. Now, if you've never seen this, again, if you're slightly younger than me and David, you might say, this was on network television? Yeah, it was.

And it was a huge deal. Enormous. There's a documentary called Predators that's about this show, directed by David Osset. You can see it on Paramount Plus. and it shows that Chris Hansen's biggest fans were not right-winger who now styled themselves as anti-pedophile crusaders. His biggest fans included Jimmy Kimball, John Stewart, Oprah.

He was a mainstream reporter hero. Yeah, I mean, just in a very basic way, the idea that this started out as a very occasional segment on Dateline NBC and then grew into its own weekly television program is pretty insane, right? I mean, like, what would, like, could you imagine if, I mean, what would be the equivalent of that now? Just from a news perspective, it's like, Ross Douthith's conversations are just doing so well. We're just going to put them on every Thursday night at eight, you know, like, what, like,

it's just, it would be just so shocking if something grew like that. It'd be like Ross Douth's crime stories in particular. Yeah, because it is a gimmick, right? I mean, it's just so it's the gimmick that's succeeded. And, you know, there are a lot of different pieces to it. I was thinking of Erkle and the way he became the star of Family Matters going from a big player. That's kind of what happened with To Catch a Predator. They still had Dateline NBC, but they just had To Catch a Predator Dateline specials.

Yes. And one of the key scenes in the movie is when Jeff Zucker, who amazingly here has agreed to play himself, It's one of the most surreal scenes in the whole thing. It is. It's totally uncanny valley because you start convincing yourself that that's maybe not Jeff Zucker because you're like, why would this be Jeff Zucker? It's so bizarre. But yeah, surreal is the right word.

He decides to put to catch a predator up against Lost on ABC, which is one of the biggest hits that is on television at that time. I was thinking about what was happening in the culture at this point, circa 2004 that led to them. 2004 is one of the heights of the internet is scary era, especially to older people who were perhaps not online. A lot of people weren't online at all at that point. The documentary Predators notes Britney Spears

and the hyper-sexualization of young women that was occurring in the culture around that time. The most shocking segment from that whole documentary, despite the subject matter is a vintage clip of Joe Scarborough, who I guess on his, was his first MSNBC show just going from- Scarborough country, yeah,

and he covers to catch a predator, and then he's like, and by the way, what the hell is Britney Spears up to? You know, like, what I, she's like,

jumps between three subjects and short order, and you're just like, my God, man, like, whoa, this was,

the thought that that would just be the job of a night, of a primetime news host, it's just sort of, just shocking. I think one of the weirdest things that I was reminded of when we went back into the subject was the fact that reruns of the show would air on MSNBC as it was then called. I was going to say that because for the people who were younger than us, they very well may remember that. There was a great New York Times article that I read that was published around this time in the late 2000s.

But yeah, it cites this. It says, yeah, it replays the episodes in primetime and weekends. In July 9th, in July 19 of MSNBC's 25 highest rated hours where late night predator reruns. Can you believe that? So this is the era of Keith Olberman, Joe Scarborough, who was in prime time. I think Rita Cosby may have followed them for at least some of this period. and MSNBC is just like actually just put a predator rerun on there. Yeah.

And we will bank some of our biggest ratings. Absolutely. Think of how that would have worked in the Rachel Maddow era of MSNBC. It would be abs or MS now. It'd be absolutely crazy. When you talk about other things that were on then, this is certainly not one that you'll recall, but just bears mention also. Oh, by the way, I believe this New York Times article is a Brian Seltre article. vintage

vintage stelter this is this is from earlier in the piece the show's success underlines a growing problem for television executives looking to push to the envelope of good taste in search of hits how to pursue high ratings without alienating advertisers or provoking negative public opinion this is

one of the things they deal with many fewer advertisers just wanted to just were signing up to be part of the to catch a predator empire just because you're associating yourself with the bad actors involved in the show right whether or not it's an endorsement. And then it goes on to say, in 2005, similar concerns prompted ABC to cancel a reality show called Welcome to the Neighborhood in which conservative couples selected new neighbors

from a pool of diverse contestants. What in the hell? That sounds-cancled before it aired, I believe. Wow. I hope somebody honors that for a piece at some point. Goodness gracious. When Westjet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board.

Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. I do want to talk to you about what was happening to TV, because that's also a part of the media story here. Yeah. So by 2004, 5, 6, 7, which is when to Catch a Predator heirs, the networks are crumbling even more than they'd already been crumbling. What you really start to see happening is the old formula of comedies and dramas is going away.

Those are really, really expensive to produce. And the aforementioned Jeff Zucker, who was president of NBC Entertainment, says, hey, what if I just start throwing even more news and reality programming into primetime? So this is when we get Donald Trump starring in The Apprentice. Fear Factor. Yeah. Remember that? Jay Leno, after he'd been defenestrated from the Tonight Show, coming back as the last hour of NBC's prime time.

Mm-hmm. And just doing a kind of fake tonight show. show in that. They're just throwing all these things. And when you have something like lost, which is like, was on all those lists. And when people are picking the best 10 television shows of the 21st century, so everybody doing that New York Times list there, and they're like, I know what we're going to put against it.

This thing. Yeah. We can't make a show that good. We don't want to really even spend the money to make a show that good. So let's throw to catch a predator against it and see how many ratings points we can peel off. There's a little bit of the way that real, that, that, that, that, live sports are treated now, or even though none of the stuff we're discussing was live,

it certainly felt more urgent. You know, it felt, it felt more live, even though it was all can, than your run-of-the-mill sitcom or drama, which now, by that point, we had all been so trained by reruns to think these things are just either, they're sort of timeless. You know, they're unmoored from the present day. Yeah, and laugh tracks. Everything felt very artificial. Yeah.

And I did want to ask you about the appeal of to catch a predator, because I think that's probably worth thinking about. Mm-hmm. Probably, you know, the most flattering thing you could say about anybody who watch it shows you're just curious about that world

that you're just like, it's the same reason you watch cops. Like, I have no experience in this, right? I am just looking in this world because there's something here that I just, I have no idea who these people are, what this is, or what it's like to see somebody get arrested. Yeah, the cops is an interesting

comparison because if cops doesn't work like you know you want to have an interesting cop that you're writing around with right that's in some ways the anchor of the show but people are watching for the criminals people are watching for the reactions to getting arrested people are watching for the car crash of it all right and with to catch a predator the police well i mean the police don't serve the same role chris hanson is sort of in the role of the the cop you're writing a long with, I guess, through the first bit of it. But someone I think, I don't know in the documentary, I believe, compared it to candid camera.

And actually, I think that's closer than anything from the journalism world. I don't really mean it particularly derisively. I just think it's really just, it's a hidden camera look at what people will do when they don't think other people are paying or watching. And this just happens to be the lowest, vilest version of those people. It's an interesting way to put it. And, of course, Hansa would always say, you know, the appeal of this show is, that I'm serving a greater purpose here.

I'm doing this for, you know, survivors of sexual abuse, anybody threatened by sexual abuse for minors. Like, this is a problem in the universe. And so I am staging these television shows so that you will see that it's a problem in the universe and that more will be done about this problem. And, of course, of the many criticisms of this,

it was like, what is the context here? Yeah. You know, are there like millions of people like this out here? Are there, are these the number of people, you know, how do we, how do we understand, right? Another one would be that the people who walked into these houses were not Mirandized when they were talking to Chris Hansen. You might think, you might be like, who is this, you know, or, okay, I'll just talk to you. If you were arrested, you would have been read your rights, that kind of thing. We talked about the theatricality of the police.

In that document predators, it talks about men who would in there and were asking for help. like I realize I have a problem. I need therapy. Are there resources for me? Yeah. Those kinds of things didn't often appear on the show. And then just the relationship between television and law enforcement. Yeah.

And the perverted justice folks, right? I mean, I think there's a lot of, when you're speaking in strict journalistic terms, the morality that is a journalist you have, you don't, this is a textbook and sense of creating news, not reporting on it, right? I mean, and to go, it doesn't. They sort of try to pass it off as like, yeah, the cops were also there coincidentally. But no, they were working hand in glove with all these local police units who welcomed them, who sought them out in some cases to come to their town and put on these big shows,

sort of validating from the police point of view, like justifying their existence or, you know, making themselves look good politically. but that's not, I mean, that's, that's no, no journalism. And there's also the, the perverted justice piece of it, which is that there's varying reports, but they were getting paid, you know, $75,000 to $150,000 an episode, you know, for this, which is understandable when you think, like, we have employees, we have people to pay, right? There's a lot of instances in which you would pay for somebody's skill set that it would

necessarily be checkbook journalism, right? But in this case, I mean, just think about it logically. You know, after the first episode, it's like, yeah, NBC wants more of these. How many more of these do you think you can do? What do you think perverted justice is going to say if they have zero people, but they're saying to they stand to make 150K an episode. They're going to fucking find the people. You know, there's a lot of claims of entrapment. And certainly every state has different laws about this sort of thing. You know, there's some states where, where this sort of thing is only allowed if there is a policeman doing the doing the the the the the the online you know discussions and so what you saw a lot of the time was that these were just totally unprosecutable even after

the dramatic arrests on you know televised arrests were made there were very few actual like prosecutions or jail sentences or or anything that came out of it so for all kinds of reasons for for many many different reasons yeah and and and for and that to me is the antithesis of what the To Catch a Predator crew said they were doing, right? It's like the police were necessary to make it seem like there was some legitimacy here, but there was actually like the absence. The existence of the show negated any legitimacy that any of these, any of these, you know, sting operations had.

Yeah, if it's just for television, then what's happening here? Yeah. Right, if it doesn't result in a prosecution. There is a scene in this movie, and this is where the movie ends up. the movie Primetime, that is. To Catch a Predator went to Murphy, Texas. They were doing their usual thing. They had a house and all this stuff.

And one of the people associated the show was talking to a man online, whom they later found out was an assistant district attorney. Now, the assistant district attorney did not come to the house that state line had wired up. So law enforcement went to his. house, Dateline cameras were present there too. They entered his house. And when they entered his house, he shot himself and died by suicide, which then created this huge uproar.

And there's like one of the more surreal scenes is that there is an investigation by 2020. Speaking of down market 60 minutes of Dateline NBC, which is one of the strangest things ever. And now Chris Hansen does a very, very similar show on his own. Yeah. Which you can see on YouTube.

And part of what the documentary Predators notes is there are a lot of people doing knockoffs of the original show just with their phones. Yeah. Well, they'll tell people to come to supermarkets or public places and then when they do,

they will film them and chase them. it has created a very, very weird secondary industry. Yeah, there's a whole chicken and the egg thing about it. I mean, I feel like the quote-unquote imitators would probably still exist even if to catch a predator never had. I mean, I feel like this is a place that most people would come to. You mentioned the sort more widespread consciousness about, you know, child sex predators, which is incredibly important. but it's also such an easy target for overstatement, you know,

because it's the most black hat, like the easiest, like universally hated villain in the world, right? Like, of course someone, it's like the only person in online that it's like, it's illegal, but it feels appropriate just to like punch the dude in the face when you find them, which you see happen on, you know, clips and stuff like that. You know, I don't,

I mean, I'm not going to, like, belabor the entrapment point, but, like, there would be a lot less excitement around to catch a predator if it had been like, you know, to catch a candy thief. And they just left a truck open with boxes of candy. You know, as people walked by and were just like, oh, shit, I should take one of those. You know, like it's, it looks like it's free. Nobody would care about that because people could sympathize with that. And this is a show of people who were not particularly sympathetic. And I will also say that there is an argument that Chris Hansen repeatedly made over the years. And, and, and, and. people involved in the show made, which is one of the important things it does is sort of make it clear that these potential child predators are not just all like creepy ogres, that they're just like regular folks, you know, that are doing this incredibly disgusting behavior. And it opens up people's eyes to that. But I think in some ways it just still sort of clouds, the issue, right? It still sort of sets them up as this other when in reality, the people that are

most dangerous to children are their family members, their friends, parents, their babysitters, you know, the people that like you feel comfortable leaving them around. And I don't know, setting it up is like this great, that the great evil only exists in a chat room somewhere, I think just is sort of is duplicitous whether or not it's on purpose. It's very 2004. here's this thing that you don't understand. Yeah. You, viewers of Dateline NBC, and I will tell you or show you that there are evil people in this realm.

There was also, I take this was an NPR piece. This is the whole script of like the radio show about it. But they, it says that when Bush was president, Bush Jr., Alberto Gonzalez, uh, his then attorney general set up a task force to look into the matter,

right? Because of just child predators online. Oh, Can you mention the political pressure generated by the show? In doing so, he cited the number of 50,000 Internet predators going after children online at any one time. When a reporter checked it out and asked where that number had come from, it had come from Dateline. And when they found the FBI consultant who Dateline cited as the source, he called it a Goldilocks number, not too big and not too small, which is to say made up. Right. So, I mean, the numbers are just impossible to discern in this.

Like, there's no, at the time, there is no reputable. And there wouldn't be, because how much could you be researching the then very new concept of online chat rooms and, you know, and grooming or sexual predators that live in those places? But there's literally no data to back up the idea that this was a looming and particularly not a growing threat. But if you're showing it repeatedly during sweeps, you're sure indicating what kind of threat you want people to believe it is. If the show goes from like twice a year to once a week, it certainly makes it feel like it's a very quickly growing problem. Some reading and watching if you want to know more about this very, very strange aging media. We mentioned the movie Primetime. We also mentioned the Doc Predators.

You can see that on Paramount Plus. They interviewed Chris Hanson for that. They interviewed some of the decoys that worked on the show, including the... That is the most kind of heart-rending part of the entire thing is watching these decoids. deal with living in the shadow of the show. One of them is his, the character in primetime is based on him. So it's really, really fascinating. I believe that Chris Hansen has said he's considering filing suit about the film,

suing A24, the producer or whatever, the distributor of the movie. He had not seen it in advance. He had refused to see it in advance. Well, it certainly doesn't paint him in a very positive light. No, it's not. I mean, I think most viewers, most people who find this film will in general be able to separate the art from the reality, the fantasy from the reality, as it were. But I do think, and I'm sure I won't be the only person to point this out, there is a very notable irony in Chris Hansen not realizing that being a public, that this is exactly what being a public figure means after he drafts. so many people into the public square himself.

Hmm. You mean, you don't like being portrayed like this in the movies. I was like, oh, you don't like it when the cameras turn on you, huh? You know, like it's, it becomes a very different thing. And if you watch that Doc Predators, they do this very interesting thing where they show him leaving the studio. Mm-hmm. They bring him into their studio.

They do an interview. And then he exits and goes down the elevator and out to his car and it's like a split screen. It's very the To Catch a Predator house exit. restaged, it's a very, very interesting moment. Now, is that exit on the record? Well, I did not see a takedown team waiting anywhere nearby. Also, I want to recommend, if you want to read about this,

Luke Dietrich wrote a great story about the events, specifically the events of this movie in the September 2007 issue of Esquire. I have it right here. Look at this fat issue of Esquire from 2007, David. Sean Penn walks into a bar Is that the cover line? Yeah, Scott Rob on Sean Penn. How 2007 coded is that? Let's do the children's game

where they have a jar of jelly beans and all the kids have to guess how many are in it. How many pages were in the September 2007 issue of S-Qua? Remember it's September, right? That's a big advertising. Well, so I can see it. So I get a little bit, this is a little bit unfair. That's about the size I imagined it to be.

2007 is probably just post peak Esquire. I'm just guessing in terms of like subscription and general notoriety, but it's probably still got the same advertiser base as during its peak. So we're counting ad pages. You know, we're counting lots and lots of cologne ads. Mostly we're counting the ad pages. I'm going to say just under 200. I would guess 185 or something.

253. Oh, my God. That's crazy. This was like, this is a medium-length novel. Yeah. That arrived in your mailbox in 2007. 253 pages.

That's wild. All right, that's the press box. He's David Chumaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Proxatzy Magic. By John, not Bones Jones. More press box next week. Joel on Monday.

David, on Thursday, we'll also have a special guest. David, I'll see you next week with more lukewarm takes about the meeting. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.