Monday, October 8, 2007
Through a Newsroom Sordidly: The NYTimes Child Porn Hoax, Revisited
filed under: Strange Bedfellows by Melissa Gira
Remember Justin Berry? Sexerati first covered the former teen webcam operator back in December 2005, when then-New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald published his deeply disturbing feature, “Through His Webcam, a Boy joins a sordid online world” — disturbing, as a portrait of sexual exploitation, carried out in the now forever-intertwined worlds of amateur porn and the mainstream media.
Susie Bright reminds us:
From the get-go, both stories were creepy: the softcore sexy descriptions, the “blame the internet” righteousness, the homophobic ick factor, and the unexplained implication that Eichenwald had looked at piles of this material himself, when by current law, he wouldn’t have that right, no matter how well-intentioned his purpose!
Now, nearly two years later, Eichenwald’s crusade continues to unravel, the latest twist being that the reporter himself was a webmaster on Berry’s webcam site. Initially, the Times defended Eichenwald’s right to have visited the webcam site, but now? When it becomes apparent again that to investigate “child porn” might mean to participate in it?
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Sordid, indeed.
the court files associated with the cases are a must read.. I have to wonder if those convicted in connection with this sorrid tale would have been led to the same conclusion… or at the very least, what Oprah and the energy commitee has in response to all this… it was big news then and now it seems dead in the water as far as the mainstream media is concerned. And I am curious as to what Justin’s reponse in all this will be.