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If you want to better understand "To Catch A Predator," the Dateline NBC series we first raised questions about early last year, check out Esquire's long-but-engrossing writeup of the fate of Texas prosecutor Bill Conradt.

Long story short: Conradt allegedly went online, posing as a 19-year-old college student, and struck up a relationship with what he believed to be a 13-year-old boy named Luke. The conversation became sexual, and "Luke" invited Conradt to come to the house where he was staying. Only "Luke," of course, wasn't real, and certainly wasn't 13. And Dateline, along with the local cops, were waiting at the house to humiliate and arrest Conradt.

Only the prosecutor didn't come. And Dateline wanted its man. So they requested that the police quickly provide an arrest and search warrant for Conradt's house. The plan? To ambush interview Conradt, confront him with the IM transcripts, and film him being arrested. Only it didn't go that way. Instead, after a SWAT team stormed his house as part of a poorly thought out police operation, Bill Conradt shot himself in the head.

And that, really, is just the worst of it: Of the 23 men arrested at the decoy house, many of whom clearly showed themselves to be dangerous to children, none received more than the shame that comes from their public exposure. The prosecutor couldn't pursue the cases for a variety of reasons, including the fact that many of the arrests may have been illegal.

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“Although the reports have been subject to some controversy, audience reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.”

--An NBC statement responding to a lawsuit from former "Dateline" producer Marsha Bartel, who claims she was fired for expressing ethical concerns to her superiors about the "To Catch A Predator" series. Among her complaints: That NBC "unethically pays" law enforcement officials and controversial vigilante group Perverted Justice; that the network "covers up the fact that law enforcement officials act improperly;" and that the identities of most of the Perverted Justice volunteers were kept secret from her, making it impossible to vet them. You can read the lawsuit at The Smoking Gun. And check out our take on the series from last February.

The Katie Chronicles: Connie Chung wants commentators to cut "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric some slack. "All this takes an enormous amount of time. TV viewing rarely changes dramatically, whereas programmers do. I think Katie's holding her own nicely," she tells the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I just wish everyone would stop analyzing her. It's not quite fair to constantly pass judgment on her and the 'Evening News.' She's a pioneer in this arena, so it's the nature of the beast today."

Marketwatch's Jon Friedman argues we might want to blame Americans for not watching the show in greater numbers. "I wouldn't rule out another possibility: America wasn't truly ready for the first solo woman evening-news anchor, let alone someone smart and attractive with pretensions to sounding puckish and hip," he writes. (We'll let you decide if that qualifies as a backhanded compliment.)

Who's Down With FCC?: More ironic than a black fly in your chardonnay: As Broadcasting & Cable notes, "[t]he oral arguments in broadcasters challenge to the FCC's March profanity rulings against Fox Billboard Awards broadcasts will be allowed to be televised." Each side is scheduled for 12 minutes of arguments, and, perhaps, a whole lot of bleeps.

Catch It While You Can: Congratulations, "To Catch A Predator!" You've made the front page of the New York Times! The ethical questions raised by your methods are the subject of yet another story in the media! And most importantly, you were the inspiration for perhaps the only funny sketch ever to appear on "Studio 60!" You better watch your step this Dec. 25th, Santa: Chris Hansen is on the case. Now why don't you tell us what's in that bag, huh?

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On March 28, as we noted, the Dayton Daily News reported that "Dateline NBC," in filming the fourth installment of its To Catch A Predator series, "compensated Perverted-Justice as 'consultants' for a weekend Internet sting that netted 18 people on attempted unlawful sexual conduct charges." Public Eye first looked at journalistic questions raised by the series in February, and others have raised similar issues.

The latest comes from The Washington Post, where Paul Farhi reports the amount Dateline paid Perverted Justice, a controversial citizen's organization that aggressively seeks to ferret out online predators, to create its latest sting. That amount? $100,000. Farhi also notes, as the Daily News did, that Dateline "went along with police officials' deputizing of the group's members, in effect turning 'Dateline's' made-for-TV operation into a law-enforcement action."

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Back in February, I wrote a post asking if "Dateline" goes too far in its popular "To Catch A Predator" series. The series, which just completed taping for a fourth installment, centers on the exposure (and, in recent installments, arrest) of men ostensibly interested in having sex with children.

Now the Dayton Daily News brings word that criticism has greeted the newest iteration of the program, which is build around a sting in Darke County, Ohio. Dateline reportedly compensated members of the controversial "anti-predator organization" Perverted-Justice.com, covering expenses for them to enter chatrooms and pose as children interested in sex and to travel to the area of the sting. Dateline also worked with the Darke County's sheriff's office, which deputized three members of the Perverted-Justice.com organization.

"There are several ethics issues involved in this," Al Tompkins, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, told the Daily News. "There's concern when news departments become an arm of law enforcement. There should be a separation of journalists and police, and our job is to cover what they do but not enable and become a participant in the enforcement."

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The third installment of "To Catch A Predator" aired Friday on NBC's "Dateline." The series, which has mostly stuck to the formula laid out in the first installment nearly two years ago, has become a staple of water cooler conversations on the strength of its striking central feature: The exposure on national television of men ostensibly interested in having sex with children.

Here's how it works: "Dateline" has volunteers pose as 12- or 13-year-olds and log in to chat rooms, where, as the accompanying online story explains, they wait "to be hit on by adults looking for sex. The…decoys tell the adults they are home alone and sometimes they say they are interested in sex, a few pretend they are eager to meet."

The volunteers, who come from Perverted-Justice, a controversial citizen's organization that aggressively seeks to ferret out online predators, engage in often stomach turning, sexually charged chats with the adults who contact them. One man, for example, writes the following to what he believes to be a 12-year-old girl: "yes I do want to come over--- would love to get you naked." That's relatively tame: Much of the chat room dialogue is too "graphic and disgusting" for "Dateline" to share. Some men, Dateline reports, send illicit photos of themselves to the decoys.

In each installment, dozens of men eventually show up at the address provided by the decoys, presumably for a sexual encounter. They enter the house, encouraged by an unseen and high-voiced decoy, and are soon confronted by "Dateline" correspondent Chris Hansen. Some of the men run; others, many of whom believe Hansen is law enforcement, accept his request for a conversation, which is recorded on hidden cameras. In this most recent installment of the series, they are arrested soon afterward.

It can be extremely difficult to discuss journalistic ethics when dealing with a topic such as this. "Dateline," many would argue, is exposing predators and getting them off the streets, and so high minded debates about the ethics of the program's methods do not come into the equation. I am sympathetic to that argument, and, indeed, I find the actions of the men featured in the program disturbing. But I don't think we can abandon questions of journalistic conduct just because our first instinct is that the ends justify the means.

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