Yesterday word came that NBC had settled a civil lawsuit brought by the sister of Dallas prosecutor Louis William Conradt Jr., who killed himself when police and Dateline’s Chris Hansen, along with a camera crew, showed up at his home when he failed to show up for his fake date with a little boy in November 2006. But don’t go poking around Dateline’s website to brush up on the incident — NBC has all but scrubbed it clean of that entire Perverted Justice investigation.
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Dateline had a certified hit on its hands with “To Catch a Predator,” the game-show program where Chris Hansen and Perverted Justice invited would-be kiddie pervs to their camera-laced house, where handcuffs were the door prize. Then Dallas prosecutor Louis William Conradt Jr. had to go and kill himself when NBC’s cameras and police officers showed up at his house to arrest him when he failed to show for his sex appointment with a 13-year-old boy, and the backlash ensued: Media moralists’ criticism grew louder with calls for lax journalistic ethics and there was the little matter of Conradt’s sister Patricia in July suing NBC Universal in a $105 million lawsuit. Now, a resolution.
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