Chris Hansen

You have to be careful not to go overboard. How do you balance what is clearly great television with good journalism?

The buying and selling of women, girls and boys is a frightening modern day form of slavery that must be stopped.

Our duty as concerned citizens is to educate ourselves so that we can recognize and report trafficking to the proper authorities.

You don't want to fall into the trip of doing a 'Predator' story every week for the rest of our lives just because it gets good numbers.

My approach to the story... is if you can get into a criminal's mind and understand how it works and understand how crime is committed, you can help prevent it from happening to someone else.

Clearly when there is a character based on you on 'South Park' or 'The Simpsons,' that is something that sticks with you for the rest of your career. But I'm fine with that.

I owe my whole career to Howard Lancour.

When we began, we used chatrooms on AOL and Yahoo! and nowadays, we have dozens and dozens of ways to communicate. Technology has improved - for everything from the cameras to the microphones. It's a whole 'nother playing field now.

There was a time not long ago when stories about Internet crimes were a tough sell for TV newsmagazines. Executive producers were wary because images of people typing on keyboards and video of computer monitors did not make especially compelling TV, even when combined with emotional interviews with victims.

I am thrilled to join the extraordinary team at Crime Watch Daily. It's a perfect platform for enterprise reporting.

I never knew before getting involved with these investigations that so much of this activity was going on. I mean, obviously there are chat rooms, social networking sites, and it occurs. I just didn't ever think it occurred at this level.

I think the 'Predator' franchise has been great on a number of levels. When it comes to online safety for kids, and adults, I think we've raised awareness and created a dialogue that didn't exist three-and-a-half years ago. Clearly, it has resonated with viewers for a variety of reasons, and I'm attached to it.

People let me into their lives, whether it's a tragic or victorious circumstance.

People can say: Okay, it's not the old-fashioned traditional journalism that took place in the 'Houston Chronicle' in 1975 - it's different. But that's also why newspapers are having a hard time staying relevant, you know?

The first rule about security is that you never talk about security.

I've done a lot of investigative reporting, and I've confronted a lot of people over the years, sometimes in dark, foreign places. But to do it over and over again in such a short period of time, it's emotionally and physically draining.

We never had a female predator surface in our investigation.

Dahvie Vanity is on our radar here at 'Have a Seat with Chris Hansen' and I promise you I'll take a really good, hard look at it.

We created compelling television, and I think we exposed a lot of bad people who were preying on children. So if the old-guard journalists have a problem with that, then so be it.

You gotta do interviews every day, and they don't end well for some people, but I've never had one end where I don't shake hands at the end of the deal, including with the predators.

You know, I've had a lot of rewarding interviews. And, a lot of times, it's the connection you make with the family of the victim, or near-victim, or somebody who spills their heart out to you for the first time. And often times, it's somebody who's watched my shows and feels comfortable with doing it.

As a parent who is also a journalist, when I talk to the brother and the sister of a victim or the parent of a victim, I put myself in their position and imagine what would it be like if that happened to me.

I mean just like the police don't tell me how to do the interviews, you know, we don't tell them how to do their business.

When we did the first 'To Catch a Predator' investigation, law enforcement wasn't involved at all. Until after the story aired.

It's not entrapment. Because the decoys never make the first move. Nor do they raise the issue of having sex. It's always the potential predator that does that.