When I write my column for the Chronicle/SFGate, I don’t expect to get too fucked with as writer, though after the years of seeing how typically slanted and sex-negative the mainstream media is about sex and porn, I knowingly *hope* for fair treatment.
Last week I wrote a column about altporn, and interviewed the top director in this porn genre, Eon McKai. Halfway through the day SFGate ran a story about an anti-porn protest at the armory building, which the good people at Kink.com just bought. The piece that ran in the SFGate the same time mine did was slanted in favor of the anti-porn stance.
When SFGate put the anti-porn piece up, they changed the front page copy on my column description to remove the word “porn” and changed it to “onscreen sex”. They moved my column to the *very bottom* of the page, and put the anti-porn piece as the top headline — for two solid days. SFGate clobbered my pro-porn piece with one that literally labled Kink’s employees as “manacled performers”.
So, today’s column is rips both SFGate and anti-porn MSM coverage a huge new orifice, from their very own pages. Citing the Gate’s Kink.com coverage as an example, I deconstruct the myth of unbiased reporting. It’s very, very controversial, and the SFGate is right now, at this very moment, fucking with me on it again. Instead of the front page title and subhead my editor and I requested they use with the column, they are using one that runs against the very principles of the entire article. They are illustrating my whole point. Read my piece and you’ll see why calling it an article about “dirty movies” is biased and unacceptable (not to mention inaccurate: Kink does not make movies). **see update at bottom of post *** Now I understand why I was invited to the Chronicle’s newsroom (paper) holiday party and not the SFGate (online) party. Snip from Kink.com and Porn Hysteria: The Lie of Unbiased Reporting:
“(…) My [Kink.com] friend reminded me that there was a protest at noon against his company’s purchase of the Armory Building — and only a few hours later we were exchanging ironic e-mails about the headline article on SF Gate covering the protest, Steve Rubenstein’s ‘50 Protest Porn Business Inside Old Mission Street Armory.’ My Kink friend wrote in regard to coping with another round of skewed media hyperbole: ‘Awesome! They just changed their erroneous caption of the guy washing the outside of the building from doing so in protest since HE WORKS FOR US.’
The SF Gate article was little different than this week’s New York Times piece about Kink and the Armory — yet it is absolutely an outstanding, shining example of the lie of unbiased reporting.
Steve Rubenstein and Jesse McKinley are reporters, and so we require that they report and not serve us with opinion, instead. In both articles, slanted phrases such as ‘dirty movies’ were slipped in like a hostess silently sliding a coaster under your drink — blink and you don’t even notice it’s part of the judgmental scenery — when a more accurate term like ‘adult’ could serve better. Rubenstein’s piece went the distance, making Kink’s employees into ‘manacled performers.’
But the most interesting example was the presentation of unchallenged material in the form of quotes from people on the street as anti-porn pundits — with no weigh-in from pro-porn pundits. Protesters were quoted as saying, ‘This neighborhood is already plagued with enough violence and prostitution as it is’ and ‘Kink degrades the neighborhood, degrades women and offers ‘dead end’ jobs that no decent person would want.’ Such statements bracket the piece — with no counter-opinions about pornography — and are presented in such a way that readers could interpret opinions as fact. Kink.com was indeed quoted — but only about their use of the space.
This was front-page ‘news.'” Link.
I am going up against MSM on their own pages. Wish me luck. Oh — and I’m also getting the CRAZY anti-porn emails, as if I need more of the same… People seem to think that if something is “bad” then biased reporting is perfectly justified…
Soaking in irony update: Check out this post about the Google Adwords running with my column today.
*** Update, noon: The front page copy now reads “What’s With The Anti-Porn Agenda? It’s time for less bias in reporting on the adult movie biz. Violet Blue: Open Source Sex.”
Update, 12:45: Check the Boing Boing post on this, SF Chron columnist slams SF Chron for biased porn reporting.
Update 5:35pm: So awesome, my overlords at Gawker Media’s Fleshbot concur with Wet Spots: Fucking With The Wrong Cupcake.
Update 2/16: These links to Kink.com and Porn Hysteria: The Lie of Unbiased Reporting gave me chills — good ones, not like the chilly wishes in my inbox this morning sent from angry christians. Check: Romemesko (!!!), Chronicling a kerfuffle (CineKink), and the *amazing* Happy Anti-Porn Hysteria Month!.
