News and Media Reports

**Davidonecall** · 05-13-12 20:00

I need to find another source like BP because I know is a matter of time that BP will follow their demands.

Originally Posted by Best Swimmer [View Original Post]

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/20...kpage-com-ads/

More than a dozen prominent pop singers and rock bands have joined a campaign aimed at forcing The Village Voice to stop running ads on Backpage. Com for escorts, strip-clubs and other 'adult services, ' a publicist for the campaign said. The list of bands who have signed a petition against the ads includes the former members of R. E. M and the members of the Roots, Alabama Shakes, the Civil Wars and Drive-By Truckers. Among the singers who have lent their support are Alicia Keys, Rosanne Cash and Talib Kweli.

Village Voice Media, whose 13 weeklies include The Village Voice, Westword and Phoenix New Times, has been under fire for eight months for continuing to run the ads, which critics say lead to the exploitation of minors. Last August the country's 51 attorneys general sent a letter demanding that the company close down the adults section on its Backpage. Com, much of it related to the sex trade.

A coalition of about 600 religious leaders have also gone after the company. The group was organized by Groundswell, an interfaith social justice group sponsored by the Auburn Seminary in New York, which ran a full page ad in The New York Times last year that was signed by clergy from all faiths and cited the arrests of adults who had sold minors for sex using Backpage. Com. 'It is a basic fact of the moral universe that girls and boys should not be sold for sex, ' the ad said.

Since then, a petition against the site started on the Web site Change. Org has gathered 225, 000 signatures, and several national brands, among them AT&T and American Airlines, have dropped advertising in the media company's publications.

The musicians who are joining the fray have begun using their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to generate support for the campaign. Mike Mills, the former bassist for R. E. M, said in a statement that the fact that musicians who admire the Voice's coverage of popular music are complaining 'should send a clear message to the company that it needs to take action to ensure no child is sexually exploited through use of its site. '

The principals of Village Voice Media – Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey – have said the company spends millions to reject ads that feature minors and has worked with law enforcement officials and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to make sure the 'adult' section only includes adults

**B Beall** · 05-13-12 19:13

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/13/an_u...nce/singleton/

Read the comments.

**B Beall** · 05-01-12 16:25

http://therandomfact.com/report-esti...affic/2211147/

And there's considerably more time spent there than at other sites:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing...are-porn-sites

I used to point out to people that the only way you hear sex covered on the news is Disease, Death, Violence and Revenge. You never hear a guy say "I was going to kill my boss, but I got laid last night and now I feel great." There's an unspoken and un-voted-upon agreement that "seriousness" is reserved for whatever makes money or kills people. If a van Gogh or a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson's collection sells for a record price, it might get blurbed by Brian Williams. A wildly erotic four-hour threesome, or a page-view record on a porn site? No. (Okay, so it's not news. Did anyone defend the Secret Service and military personnel on the grounds that "it was harmless fun, and sex is good for you"? Not in the mass-market media.)

I don't blame anyone for being concerned about exploitation. I wish we all would be; realistically, I hope that most of us wouldn't condone exploitation of a child or an adult. But, again, if you're really concerned about child exploitation then your primary focus should be on agribusiness, not BP.

**Best Swimmer** · 04-30-12 14:55

http://www.texasgoldengirl.com/after...-prostitution/

Just legalize it already. It would stop soooo many problems!

**Best Swimmer** · 04-30-12 14:48

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/wo...ndal.html?_r=3

**Best Swimmer** · 04-30-12 14:44

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/20...kpage-com-ads/

More than a dozen prominent pop singers and rock bands have joined a campaign aimed at forcing The Village Voice to stop running ads on Backpage. Com for escorts, strip-clubs and other 'adult services, ' a publicist for the campaign said. The list of bands who have signed a petition against the ads includes the former members of R. E. M and the members of the Roots, Alabama Shakes, the Civil Wars and Drive-By Truckers. Among the singers who have lent their support are Alicia Keys, Rosanne Cash and Talib Kweli.

Village Voice Media, whose 13 weeklies include The Village Voice, Westword and Phoenix New Times, has been under fire for eight months for continuing to run the ads, which critics say lead to the exploitation of minors. Last August the country's 51 attorneys general sent a letter demanding that the company close down the adults section on its Backpage. Com, much of it related to the sex trade.

A coalition of about 600 religious leaders have also gone after the company. The group was organized by Groundswell, an interfaith social justice group sponsored by the Auburn Seminary in New York, which ran a full page ad in The New York Times last year that was signed by clergy from all faiths and cited the arrests of adults who had sold minors for sex using Backpage. Com. 'It is a basic fact of the moral universe that girls and boys should not be sold for sex, ' the ad said.

Since then, a petition against the site started on the Web site Change. Org has gathered 225, 000 signatures, and several national brands, among them AT&T and American Airlines, have dropped advertising in the media company's publications.

The musicians who are joining the fray have begun using their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to generate support for the campaign. Mike Mills, the former bassist for R. E. M, said in a statement that the fact that musicians who admire the Voice's coverage of popular music are complaining 'should send a clear message to the company that it needs to take action to ensure no child is sexually exploited through use of its site. '

The principals of Village Voice Media – Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey – have said the company spends millions to reject ads that feature minors and has worked with law enforcement officials and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to make sure the 'adult' section only includes adults

**Ilapp** · 04-30-12 09:15

Maybe we will have a real discussion here, and I knew that one line would draw you out of the weeds old friend. Oh, and thanks for asking the girls are doing great, safely esconced in ilapps home for wayward, but of legal age, youths. Amazing the things the state will fund isn't it?

Seriously though, the claims made about trafficking can be counter-claimed by more reliable fact and less emotion, as you have noted before, but it makes so little fodder if you are a socially conservative public servant seeking election / re-election at some point. Wait, if they are public servants, does that not mean we the public have just engaged in trafficking of some sort, one more reason to look over our shoulder, eh? Obviously a simple answer would never work, it doesn't generate enough chaos around itself to make it profitable to those in charge, irregardless of the currency they are looking for, but there has to be a better solution no matter how convoluted it winds up. Unfortunately I doubt even that unsatisfactory result will happen in my lifetime.

**B Beall** · 04-30-12 08:53

This, as the "news excuse" for the sniggering juvenile sexuality behind such coverage, just kills me. Secret Service agents are paid by the government. That means everything they ever spend money on is "at taxpayer expense"? And every time a sailor hires a hooker?

There are two hundred members of the Indiana General Assembly, and who knows how many aides and clerical workers, all paid for by the taxpayers of this state. How much time was spent "crafting" that "enhancement" of child sex trafficking laws? It netted-supposedly-one charge, based on the say so of two 19-year-olds who'd been popped on Class A misdemeanor soliciting charges. (I do hope the state found them good foster homes.) The distinction is that instead of being charged with felony procurement, under the existing law, he could be charged with felony child-procurement, because the women told police they were under 16 when they started. Anybody think that's going to be pursued at trial? In front of a jury?

How many police man hours went into that, and how much energy was spent trying to turn an arrest into a child-sex headline, to justify all the attention paid to what was already clearly recognized as an urban myth? How much did we pay the Prosecutor and the top brass to attend seminars conducted by national anti-sex crusaders? And that's not officials spending their income on off-duty pursuits; that's what we received for our money.

We never ask the cost of being a nation of perpetual adolescents about sex.

**Ilapp** · 04-30-12 07:29

http://www.cnbc.com/id/26869953

Interesting, too much so when it comes on late just before you want to go to sleep. Can pick it up from Hulu and other places I'm sure. Too brief on facts but it also refutes claim that sex trafficking is the issue in the oldest profession that many, including our local saviors of our souls, want to profess. Looks more like a gloss piece, than hard news, and the section on the one hour GFE part of the business was so brief you would miss it if you blink. It will never replace Andy Griffith reruns but not bad and good for discussion points

**Best Swimmer** · 04-30-12 00:40

http://www.emissourian.com/news/nati...9bb2963f4.html

Never mind the use of taxpayer dollars, the potential threat to national security, the embarrassment brought to the USA government. In one regard, at least,"Hookergate" was a good thing, at least to sex workers in the United States: It called attention to the plight of sex workers here, where prostitutions is illegal and practitioners have no rights.

"If it had happened here, the woman couldn't have gone to the police and said, 'These guys are trying to cheat me out of money. ' Instead, she would have been hurt and cheated, and Mr. Agent Man would have gone home and patted himself on the back for having gotten one over on her," said Maggie McNeill, a former New Orleans call girl and the founder of The Honest Courtesan.

Last week. 11 Secret Service agents were recalled to the USA from Cartagena, Colombia, where they had been on assignment to help protect President Obama at the Summit of the Americas. They were placed on administrative leave after allegedly bringing prostitutes back to the Hotel Caribe, and their security clearance was later revoked. Ten USA military personnel are also being investigated for their role in the affair.

Interestingly, hiring a prostitute (and related adultery issues) was never specifically outlawed in the military until 2006, when the Bush administration made changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Today, it's banned even if prostitution is legal in the country. Military personnel who patronize prostitutes can receive up to a year in jail, get a dishonorable discharge, and lose all pay and allowances.

McNeill and others say the policy is ridiculous, and that criminalizing prostitution is not only a human rights violation, but also a safety and labor issue. Now is a perfect time to call attention to the plight of sex workers—which includes prostitutes, escorts, as well as adult film models and actors—in the USA, where prostitution is illegal except in some pockets of Nevada. The repercussions of underground sex businesses can be dangerous, if not deadly.

"We've found in New York that when sex workers are criminalized, they are afraid to go to police when they are victims of crime, including theft, rape and human trafficking," said Sienna Baskin, co-director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York, which advocates for sex workers and survivors of human trafficking.

"They are also subject to bad policing practices and police brutality," added Baskin, who recently returned from a day of lobbying in New York's state capital, Albany, to pass Bill A1008 / S323, which would prohibit police and prosecutors from citing possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution.

Not only are Americans outraged by the use of taxpayer dollars in connection with Secret Service extracurricular activities, but there is concern that the agents, most of whom are married, violated their top-secret security clearances by boasting to the women about their affiliation with the president and that sensitive information could be passed to terrorists or drug cartel leaders.

But while they acknowledge the potential dangers to national security, sex workers in the United States think the "breach" argument is another form of discrimination against prostitutes."If the issue is attracting attention or bragging about being in the security detail, then it would be a problem if they brought in any outsider," said McNeill."If that's the case, then what difference does it make if she's a prostitute or an accountant?"

According to The New York Times, the incident was brought to light after one of the women failed to depart the hotel at 7 a. M, a policy for non-registered guests staying over. Hotel staff and police searched for her; they found her quarreling with an agent over her fee. She reportedly said they had agreed on an $800, but that the agent only offered her $30.

"I tell him, 'Baby, my cash money, '" the woman told the Times.

Colombian police officers argued on her behalf, while American officials tried to quell the situation. She was finally given $225, and left. But since the situation involved a foreign national, the police notified the Secret Service and USA Department of State.

Sex worker advocates say she was lucky to have gotten police support. And Norma Jean Almodovar, a retired prostitute and the founder of International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education, a non-profit organization, doubts the women in Colombia wanted the story to get out.

"Why would we want our clients to be arrested? They provide our living, they pay our rent," she said."Part of what we get paid for is discretion."

Nor are they at all surprised that the situation occurred in the first place."My friends and I have certainly seen our share of law enforcement officers and politicians," said Leigh."If they fired or arrested every man in government who ever saw a prostitute, there would not be anyone left to run it."

Indeed, politicians from both sides of the political aisle have gotten in trouble for sex scandals: In 2008, then New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer quit after his involvement with prostitutes went public. The previous year, Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias resigned after it was confirmed that he frequented a Washington, D. C, escort service.

Almodovar looks at it this way."On a scale of 1 to 10, if murder is the worst thing you can do to your fellow human, giving them an orgasm has to be one of the best things, unless one believes that giving or receiving sexual pleasure is a bad thing. Which I do not," she said."Why are so many people terrified of sex and sexual pleasure? I do not understand that at all."