The dark controversy that led to To Catch a Predator's cancellation as Primetime hits US cinemas
Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide which some readers may find distressing.
A new film starring Robert Pattinson is going to revisit the controversial show To Catch a Predator nearly 20 years after its cancellation in 2008.
The show ran between 2004 and 2007, and 20 episodes were aired in total, with the show being cancelled in 2008.
The premise of the show followed men being lured to a sting house, believing that they would be meeting an underage person at that location.
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Prior to arriving at the house the men had been speaking to what they believed to be children online, but who were actually people with the watchdog group Perverted Justice, who were posing as underage people in chat rooms.
Once there, they would be confronted by host Chris Hansen, who would ask the men what they believed they were going to do at the house.
After being confronted at the house many of the men would subsequently be arrested, with Hansen saying that many of them could be considered 'potential sexual predators'.
A new film will see Pattinson playing Hansen, with the movie called Primetime and exploring the show.
Criticism of To Catch a Predator
While the death of Bill Conradt stood out on the show, it was far from the only controversy that it faced including while it was on air.
Critics felt that the show's format crossed a journalistic line as it was not reporting news, but 'making' news by luring the men to the houses and staging the confrontations.
Others also warned that the show risked straying into entrapment, which is causing someone to commit a crime that they would not otherwise have committed.
Among those to warn of this was Brian Montopoli, who wrote for CBS that 'identifying someone as a child molester on national television' was a kind of punishment, and the people carrying out the stings were not law enforcement, as well as highlighting that the show risked entrapment, though he acknowledged that the actions of the men involved were 'disturbing'.
Why was To Catch a Predator cancelled?
The show was cancelled in 2008, and generated huge controversy over the way that it was formatted.
In 2015 Hansen would tell Time magazine that he felt that by 2008 the show had 'proved our point', but questions hovered over one particularly controversial section of the show.
This was the suicide of Bill Conradt in 2006, who was one of the men who was invited to a sting house by members of Perverted Justice.
Conradt was an assistant district attorney in Texas who had been messaging a Perverted Justice volunteer he believed to be a 13-year-old boy.
After exchanging some messages, Conradt stopped responding to them, and also did not go to the sting house.
In a departure from how they would normally do an episode, the programme then did not stage their confrontation at a sting house.
Instead, warrants for his arrest the search of his house were obtained, and the crew accompanied the police to Conradt's house to confront him.
A SWAT team would raid Conradt's house on November 5 2006, with Esquire reporting that officers heard Conradt say something like 'I'm not going to hurt anyone'.
He then put a gun to his head and fired, dying within an hour, and a police officer was seen turning to a camera and saying 'that'll make good TV'.
While Hansen had said the show ran its course, the controversial episode was believed to have been a factor.
Topics: Film and TV, Robert Pattinson, Celebrity, News
Kit Roberts