|
NBC settles suicide lawsuit
26/06/2008 15:39 - (SA)
Robert MacMillan
New York - Television network NBC has settled a lawsuit brought by the family of a man who killed himself when confronted with cameras for the TV show To Catch a Predator, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
"The matter has been amicably resolved to the satisfaction of both parties," NBC spokesperson Jenny Tartikoff said in a statement, the Times reported.
The network would not say how much the General Electric Co unit paid, the paper said.
The family of Louis W Conradt Jnr sued NBC for $105m last year after the assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, Texas, had reportedly sent sexually explicit messages to a person that he believed was under-age.
The person actually was a volunteer for Perverted Justice, a group that helps set up stings to catch child sexual predators and was a paid consultant for the Predator series, the Times said.
Ethical questions
The premise of the show To Catch a Predator is that someone poses as an underaged girl in an internet chat room, and then lures men who want to meet them to a house.
Instead of finding the girl, they are confronted by the TV show's host and a camera crew. The show has raised ethical questions over the programme's "all-access arrangement with the local police and Perverted Justice", the Times said.
In Conradt's case, local police decided to arrest him at his home after he did not show up at the pre-arranged house, the Times said.
As the police and camera crews entered the house, Conradt shot himself in the head, the paper said.
In February a judge dismissed some of the lawsuit's claims, but declared that a jury "could find that NBC crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement," the Times reported.
- Reuters
|
South Africa
