Of course it's entrapment - but it's also great fun to see some scumbag loser reduced to a whimpering twit by a preaching and posturing reporter, all for your home-viewing entertainment. It's the modern version of a good old neighborhood tar and feathering - a poisonous mixture of profit motive, punishment, and schadenfreude. Instant Karma in the land of the self-righteous.
But what surprises me is how these morons always come clean in front of the camera about why they're there, pleading to the reporter with the camera rolling, "I know it's wrong, and I'm sorry sir, I promise I won't do it again."
If it were me, I would say that I was there to see some chick I met in a bar who had given me the address and invited me over, and that I know nothing about any young girl, and get that fucking camera out of my face! Until the guy walks into the house, no one had ever seen him before.
(Edit. And now that I think about it, I'm sure that the network lawyers see to it that the only episodes aired are those where the guy comes out and admits to being there for 12 yr-old Barbie. There must be guys who deny everything and never make prime time. I know that I could visit chat rooms without leaving any trace on my computer (only visit chat sites using a browser opened in a virtual machine isolated from your operating system - when you shut down the virtual computer, all traces of anything done while in that virtual machine vanish) and without my online activity being traceable to my home computer (connect to the internet via a web proxy in Kazakhstan). So if they aired everything, something like this could happen: you walk into the house, the cameras roll and the reporter accuses you of being a pervert, you deny everything, the police arrest you, the program is aired (and note that they never pixel out the perp's face), the police find no computer evidence against you and have to let you go, and you then sue the shit out of the network and move to Thailand, buy a Pattaya beach-front villa, and become president for life of the Gary Glitter Fan Club.
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Last edited by Marsupial at 7-9-2008 17:29 ]