Is It Safety, or the Business of Safety?
Child safety must always come first. Public safety must always come first. That is why we should ask hard questions when protecting children becomes part of a business.
There is a real business behind the cameras. In its 2023 announcement, TruBlu named Hansen as a co-founder and promoted Takedown with Chris Hansen. It offered subscriptions for $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Those were the prices then, not today’s confirmed rates.
Making money does not prove wrongdoing. But selling a show does not prove that it makes children safer, either. We should ask for clear evidence of the results.
In Cameras, Cops and the Business of Public Shame, FAC asked what happens when police work becomes public entertainment. Does the audience see the full story, or just the part that makes the strongest headline?
Our post on Chris Hansen in Florida and the public cost of the televised sting looks at costs, filming and the business built around footage. It also explains what records are missing. We cannot assume public funding went to Hansen or that every arrest became a conviction.
In Florida Online Stings: Child Safety, Decoys and Public Cost, we ask how these cases are run and what safety gains can be shown.
Labels grab attention. But what happens to families after the cameras leave? Do corrections get as much attention as arrests? Do survivors get lasting help?
Facts matter. Real stories matter, too.
Tune in Monday. If the show takes calls, call 800-409-9393 to ask a question, correct a claim or share your story. Be respectful, stick to the facts and share only what you want made public.
Children deserve protection. The public deserves clear answers. Are we paying for safer communities, or for a story that keeps us afraid?
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Here’s my beef with Chris Hansen, and there are many issues I have with him.
1. He might not have started the vigilante sting trend but he popularized it. After all, he worked with an online vigilante group that conducted online entrapment busts just for public humiliation.
2. All these folks who were kids and teens who grew up watching that stupid show are in their 20s and 30s and are repeating what they saw on that show. Now that it is 20 years old, “To Catch a Predator” (“TCAP”) is old enough to trigger feelings of nostalgia.
3. Exacerbating this issue is that Internet culture leans heavily into cruelty and seeing people’s lives ruined. Vigilante groups like the one featured on TCAP appeals to those who enjoy the worst aspects of Internet culture.
4. Chris Hansen is a one-trick pony who is literally a failure at everything else. This clown was so broke he had to start writing bad checks. He even used abuse “survivors” to raise money and kept it for himself. He should be in prison for fraud.
5. It is funny to know this but he was busted cheated on his wife by hidden camera. It isn’t fully an act of karma but it was good for a laugh.
Chris Hansen is just a lowlife shady reporter who caught lightning in a bottle and now he is like a band that had that one song everyone remembers from decades past, doing tours in seedy, smoke-filled bars for old fogeys who still remember them.
I actually listen to the joe show on occasion, and I can tell you that the moderator will ask your name and where you’re calling from before they put you on the air…if the conversation gets too heated, you will disappear…ooops…there must have been a technical mishap…