by
Chris Hansen
After Michigan native Chris Hansen left Channel 4 in Detroit to work for NBC in Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, he developed a wildly popular show in 2004, “To Catch a Predator,” that showed him working with law enforcement, targeting men seeking sex with minors, who ended up being decoys in a sting.
The series was discontinued in December 2007, but reruns with updates on cases ran for another couple of years.
Julie Hinds of the Detroit Free Press reports that “Predators,” a documentary about the show that became part of American culture, begins a run Friday at the Birmingham 8 Powered by Emagine. She notes that the film describes itself as a “chilling, thought-provoking exploration of the scintillating rise and staggering fall.” It debuted at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it earned strong reviews. (See trailer at end of story)
The film is directed by David Osit, a University of Michigan graduate in Middle Eastern and North African Studies.
“To Catch a Predator” show usually began with someone from the watchdog group Perverted-Justice posing as a teenager and communicating in a chat group. A man would show up at the house, thinking he was about to engage in sex with a minor. That’s when Chris Hansen would pop out with cameramen and start talking.
Sometimes the nervous person would stick around and answer questions. Sometimes they would bolt, only to get arrested outside the home by law enforcement Hansen was working with. Some of the men went to prison.
Hansen worked as an investigative reporter for WXYZ and later WDIV before heading to NBC in 1993. He’s a graduate of Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield Hills and Michigan State University. I became friends with Hansen when I worked at The Detroit News covering federal courts and federal law enforcement, and he was at WDIV. We often covered the same stories.
When I was a reporter at The Washington Post, Hansen called and said “To Catch a Predator” planned to soon air a show that was filmed in a D.C. suburb in Virginia at a home owned by a mutual friend of ours. The friend let NBC use the home as part of the sting.
Hansen offered to provide some video and let The Washington Post write something about the show before it aired.
The Virginia editor was uncomfortable doing a story, being a skeptic of the show. The D.C. editor, who I worked for, wanted to do it. I then had a meeting with the Metro editor, who said we had to make sure we pointed out that the show violated our journalistic standards by not immediately identifying themselves when confronting people.
I wrote the piece about the show busting different people from the D.C. suburbs, including a rabbi with a national youth group based in Rockville, Md., and a Prince George’s County, Maryland, special education teacher.
In one instance, Hansen confronts the rabbi. I wrote in November 2005:
“In the video excerpts provided by Dateline, a man...walks into the kitchen of a house and is soon met by Hansen. Without identifying himself as a journalist, Hansen begins peppering the man with questions about his Internet activities and his presence at the house. After the man asks Hansen for the second time who he is, the reporter explains that he is with Dateline and that the program is taping a story about men who visit Internet chat rooms in pursuit of children.”
Major publications have written about the new documentary and have referred to the original show itself.
The New York Times reports:
“But as David Osit’s probing, troubling documentary ‘Predators’ demonstrates, the sociological implications of the show were (and are) anything but simple, beginning with what the series’ popularity suggests about the viewers who watched it. Mark de Rond, an ethnographer who is interviewed at length in the film, is fascinated by the moment in which Hansen confronts his subject: ‘What you’re seeing is effectively someone else’s life end,’ de Rond says, ‘and they realize it.’ Why is it that TV watchers are drawn to seeing a person, however horrible, humiliated in this way?”
The Hollywood Reporter wrote critically:
“Sure, you might say, every episode was a carefully orchestrated piece of entrapment in which the relationship between journalists and law enforcement became blurred in a way that the relationship between journalists and law enforcement should never become blurred.”
“It took just 20 episodes for the Dateline NBC program ‘To Catch a Predator’ to leave a mark on the culture.”
“Premiering in competition at Sundance, ‘Predators’ would be a safe bet for high-profile distribution and extensive festival play even if it weren’t this smartly and sensitively executed.”
Hansen, who splits his time between suburban Detroit and New York, tells Deadline Detroit that the director of the documentary reached out to him and he agreed to participate, saying, “He had done some other work that was pretty compelling, and I agreed to participate. So I did an interview with him. The documentary is one director’s take on the original show.” He said he takes issue with some things but respects the product as a whole.
“I think overall the documentary gives you a good look through the eyes of one director at the impact of the original predator investigations.”
“It’s a 10,000-foot view of his take on what happened. But he also does some good things. In the interview with me, he points out that a lot of my reasons for doing the show and getting involved in it was the documentary we did on Dateline, of me going over to Cambodia and exposing American and Western European sex tourists. He found that video and shows it, which, you know, is pretty good work.”
The documentary reports on an incident in 2006 involving a Texas assistant district attorney, William Conradt, who killed himself just before law enforcement was about to raid his home as part of the show. There were questions whether the prosecutor had taken the next step to meet up with a minor, which could have led to charges.
“He doesn’t say in the documentary that the assistant D.A., William Conradt, had child porn on his computer.”
Hansen disputes reports that the incident resulted in the show’s cancellation, saying NBC continued to produce segments and later ran reruns with updates.
“It’s just not true.”
Hansen is still in the game. He is co-founder of TruBlu, a streaming network that focuses on crime and hosts his latest version of “To Catch a Predator,” simply called “Takedown with Chris Hansen.” He also has two podcasts — “Have a Seat with Chris Hansen,” in which he interviews notable people, and “Predators I’ve Caught,” which deals with sexual predators.
Is he proud of the work on child predators?
“Absolutely, I’m proud of what I accomplished. I think we created awareness and a dialogue that didn’t exist before, and I think, you know, 21 years of doing this particular franchise, we continue to expose people who are trying to exploit children online.
“When we started, we had no idea that we’d be doing this 21 years,” he said.
