PREDATORS

The Dateline NBC series “To Catch a Predator,” which aired from 2004 to 2007, largely adhered to a straightforward formula: Hire an actor who looks younger than his or her age to lure an adult who is seeking a sexual encounter with a child.

Seattle Times

'Predators' challenges us to examine this uncomfortable topic in order to find humanity in its complexity.

Cinemacy

“Our age-old love of participatory punishment — an impulse that’s manifested in everything from stocks and pillories to public executions — remains fully intact.”

NY Times

Examining the ghoulish NBC hit 'To Catch a Predator' and its cultural legacy over the last two decades, Osit sharply queries its ethics, its insight and its effectiveness as an instrument of justice.

Variety

Predators director David Osit and To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen discuss why the early-aughts show became so popular — and at what cost

Rolling Stone Magazine

A sting-operation-meets-hidden-camera-prank, the show had a riveting hook: Men engaging in erotic online conversations with people they thought were minors got invited over to the children’s houses, welcomed inside by a young-looking actor and then surprised — and publicly grilled — by news anchor Chris Hansen, who had already won two Emmys for a piece on sexual trafficking in Cambodia.

LA Times

To Catch a Predator (2004–2007), a periodic segment on the TV newsmagazine Dateline NBC, was one of the biggest nonfiction sensations of the 2000s. The show collaborated with various local law enforcement agencies around the U.S. to entrap would-be child predators, having decoys posing as minors speak with them online and luring them to houses for promised sexual encounters, where the cameras and police would be waiting for them instead.

IDA - International Documentary Association

A man would arrive at a house after chatting to someone he believed was underage, with a plan to have sex or engage in a sexual act. The house would be rigged with hidden cameras and the child would be an actor of age, playing the role of an excitable pre- or young teen, maybe even suggesting they both drank alcohol as a further illicit act.

The Guardian