What is the controversy about having journalists be part of what amounts to a police sting operation?
Hansen: We try to keep it separate. Perverted Justice performs the role of being the Chinese wall between law enforcement and journalism. We’re allowed to do what we need to do as journalists, and the police do what they need to do. A couple of issues have been raised. Is it appropriate to pay Perverted Justice? Well, they can’t be expected to do this stuff for free forever. They thought it was fair to get paid, and we entered into a consultant agreement with them just like we do with retired generals who talk with us about the war in Iraq and retired FBI agents who talk with us about the latest crime trends. All we’ve done is to take the innovative hidden-camera techniques that we used in India to expose child slave labor in the silk business, in Cambodia to expose the child sex trade, and in Bangladesh to expose working conditions in factories that make clothes for Wal-Mart and other stores. It’s a new crime and it’s changing quickly, and we’ve had to adapt our reporting measures to
