Do we like them?

Do we like Chris Hansen?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up in his words or work, and he has years of child-safety reporting, but critics still question how his stings were run.

Hansen started reporting while still at Michigan State, spent about a decade in local news, then joined NBC in 1993 and picked up several Emmys. He became a household name with To Catch a Predator on Dateline NBC, which ran from 2004 to 2007. The Washington Post says he has been involved in more than 500 arrests across his shows.

The story that follows him is Murphy, Texas, in 2006. A sting there ended with assistant district attorney Bill Conradt taking his own life as police moved in, and his sister sued NBC for $105 million. The case was settled, and prosecutors dismissed the other Murphy investigations, which had been run with the group Perverted Justice.

Critics, including the Esquire story the film draws on, argued Hansen worked too closely with police, and that criticism has followed him since. That's the asterisk on the nice test: a legitimate worry about method, not a pattern of mistreating people.

On the harm test, we found nothing. No remarks against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet turned up in the reporting we could open, and his shows chase adults accused of going after kids. We couldn't open every page we wanted, so call that a clean search, not a full audit.

The fresh stoush is Primetime. Hansen was not consulted, refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement for an advance screening, and then called the film mostly fiction with “occasional moments of truth” on his own account. His line: “I'm busy being the real Chris Hansen every day.”

He also told Variety he has not ruled out action against A24, saying lawyers are looking at it and that the studio exploited his name and brand. Whether you read that as a man defending his reputation or a man chasing a payday is up to you. Nothing has been filed that we could find.