‘To Catch a Predator’ Became a Ratings Sensation By Exposing Internet Sex Predators. A New Sundance Documentary Examines Its Complicated Legacy

variety.com:

Brent Lang Executive Editor Like many Americans in the early aughts, documentary filmmaker David Osit watched “To Catch a Predator,” a hidden camera reality TV show that followed journalist Chris Hansen working in coordination with law enforcement while conducting sting operations that exposed adult men who were hoping to have sex with minors. “I found it fascinating and weird and strangely addictive,” he admits. “In many ways, it was sort of the template for modern true crime TV.” But he never really gave the NBC series much thought until years later when he came across an article about Bill Conradt, a Texas assistant district attorney who committed suicide in 2007 after police served him with a warrant stemming from one of Hansen’s online investigations into potential pedophiles.

Hansen and his crew were on the scene when Conradt shot himself. The episode eventually aired, but NBC’s journalism was criticized for breaching ethical lines and Conradt’s family sued. “To Catch a Predator” went off the air the next year.

Reading about the story led Osit down the rabbit hole, as he researched more about the show’s legacy he discovered that there was a small, but intense online “To Catch a Predator” fandom.

It was one that had collected, through FOIA requests, raw footage from the making of the show. Seeing it put him in a discombobulating headspace. “Watching it was a different kind of emotional experience,” he remembers. “I would view this raw material and feel kind of heartbroken for these men in a way that I never felt when I’d watch the show, but then I’d read a chat log of their comments, and feel disgusted by them again, but then I go back hear a phone call between them and a decoy and feel bad for them again.