That's entertainment?

I just got back from the gym all steamed up, not from the cursed elliptical machine, but from the bizarre Dateline MSNBC program I watched while climbing my way to gluteal improvement. It's called To Catch A Predator and I'd heard about it, in the way you hear murmurings about troubling, exploitative television, but I'd never watched it before. I didn't have much choice tonight because the screen attached to my machine was broken--I couldn't change the channel, and I couldn't turn it off, and I couldn't even get rid of the closed captioning. So I watched it, like you watch a snake swallow a mouse on a nature program. Not because you are enjoying it, but because there is something horribly compelling about seeing base instinct at work.
I will spare you the details cos they are just horrendous/absurd (in one case involving Cool Whip, an American whipped cream substitute, and a cat), but here's the basic outline: men were lured to a Florida house to meet with a 14-year-old boy or girl--depending on their preference--they had encountered in an online chat room, for sexual purposes. But ba-ba-ba-boom, they weren't meeting a 14-year-old at all, but some super-tanned blow-dry guy with a camera team.
He met them as they wandered the kitchen/lounge, looking for the child they'd hoped to meet, directed them to sit on a stool at a kitchen breakfast bar on which sat a plate of cookies and a vase of flowers, then interviewed them. At this point they did not know they were being filmed. He asked them if they had ever met children for sex before, and what in the heck did they think they were doing, and did they realise their behavior was unacceptable. And then he revealed his identity, just as two camera men came out of hiding. But that's not all, folks. Then he told them they were free to go--except when they got outside, police literally jumped from the bushes and pushed them to the ground. This was ostensibly for the benefit of concerned parents everywhere.
Now, I am not for a moment defending these men, ranging in age from 20 to 61, gay and straight, married and not, fathers and not. They were there to harm children, no doubt about it. But explain to me the public good that is achieved with this candid camera-style sting? (The men's faces were not obscured, their names were revealed, their personal lives sliced open.)
Result? The men's families are humiliated, their careers potentially destroyed, their anonymity at the supermarket gone. The men are arrested and charged and yes, put out of action for a brief time, but is that enough? Where's the follow-up care/treatment/prevention? I can't imagine Dateline MSNBC feels any responsibility towards these guys and their families. Forgetting that, is it an appropriate role for me, as a television viewer, to judge men whose lives I know nothing about, and who have been coerced into breaking the law by a television network which stands to profit from its trickery? Should that really be what passes for entertainment--and it is presented as entertainment; the news-value window-dressing is fooling no-one.
I try not to get lathered up about social issues just before bed, but I left the gym feeling quite nauseous.