Sad State of Affairs at the New York Times
We’re receiving inquiries about the gross inaccuracies and absence of fact checking I cited in Monday’s New York Time article by Brad Stone. There are quite a few, but I’ll start walking through them. Let’s start with this one:
The ads, many of which blatantly advertise prostitution, are expected to bring $36 million this year, according to a new projection of Craigslist’s income.
Each ad submitted to “adult services” on CL is manually screened by one or more human reviewers. Ads that “blatantly advertise prostitution” are summarily rejected. The phrase “many of which blatantly advertise prostitution” is so patently false (and damaging) that another phrase comes to mind - “actionably defamatory”. In fact, the NY Times article probably violated multiple tenets of the Society of Professional Journalist’s Code of Ethics. More on that later.
Although you won’t find them in CL “adult services,” there are plenty of places where such ads *can* be found in great abundance.
For example, most if not all adult service ads featured by The Village Voice’s backpage.com (which carries more adult ads than CL in most US cities) would be rejected by our manual reviewers — and in fact, quite a few of them, if submitted to CL, would be reported by our reviewers to NCMEC’s cybertipline.
Here’s an ad with photos (NSFW) of bare genitalia (CL reviewers reject ads with nude pictures), describing specific sex acts offered (CL reviewers reject ads with sexual language or code words):
******Ev3Ry !!! M@N’s!///!!% W3tt ***Dre@M __ CuM%TruE*** - 24
Watch closely as i bounce my fat luscious, juicy apple bottom booty up & down ure big c*ck!!! 80Roses** Quk $e$$ion 100Roses** Half Hr 140Roses** Full Hr200 Roses.
This ad offers “greek” in exchange for 100 “kisses” in the ad title (CL reviewers reject such ads):
♥ ♥ SexY EXxXOTiC BuSTii B@RB!E (( g/r/3/3/k)) ♥ ♥ 100 kisses - 21
The following ad, if submitted to CL’s review team, would have been reported to NCMEC’s cybertipline:
** I JuST TuRNeD 18 YeSTeRDaYY** FiNaLLY LeGal - 18
my parents are at work and im all alone jus waiting for someone to cum inside and invade my young, barely legal, juicy, suculant love nest.
I’m now hearing that AG Blumenthal was quite taken aback this morning when a CNN reporter had the audacity to ask him why he was spending all of his time on craigslist when Village Voice carries more adult ads of a far more graphic nature — but does not manually screen them or take any of the other steps CL does to combat trafficking. Senatorial candidate AG Blumenthal hemmed and hawed (as he’s done for the past year) but really does not have a good answer for this question.
April 28th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
This post brings up some very valuable points.
But be careful not to think that blame-shifting is a scapegoat. Should the media discuss all mainstream avenues allowing prostitution? Probably, yes. But “Hey, those guys are worse than we are!” Is not a valid argument as to why prostitution and victims of sex-trafficking can still be found on Craigslist.
One reason NYT may focus more on CL than on Village Voice is, quite frankly, I’ve never even heard of VV or backpage.com. To make the public aware of the tragedy and endemic of the sextrade in the US, they must use sites/terms/avenues familiar to the general public. And the general public is - in my experience - very familiar with Craigslist.
Sorry it seems like you’re being picked on. I hope we’re just calling you to an even higher standard. As the Spiderman movies point out: “With great power comes greater responsibility.”
And we want Craigslist to be an even greater site.
April 28th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Mr. Buckmaster,
I published the story below in the Huffington Post yesterday.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-schwartz/is-craigslist-a-pimp_b_552438.html
The story literally got no play, so I don’t think you need to worry about it attracting more unwanted attention. However, the analysis is interesting and I think the argument is persuasive.
Craigslist should stop publishing these advertisements. You don’t need the money and publishing them does far more harm than good. I’ve read hundreds of the advertisements and to pretend the vast majority do not involve solicitations for prostitution is disingenuous at best.
Listen to the better angel on your shoulder. Do the right thing.
Thanks very much.
Sincerely,
Peter Schwartz
April 29th, 2010 at 5:40 am
Hey Jim,
I just wanted to take a moment to say that I really enjoyed reading your post and loved the way you handled/reacted to this situation. And I agree with Chase above, I think it’s just a case of them picking on Craiglists because of your size and exposure.
Anyway good luck with it, and keep us posted.
William
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:30 pm
My question is, does ‘CL’ accept payment for ads in ‘Adult Services’?
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:44 pm
The only way to truly protect women from abuse and exploitation is to legalize “prostitution”. Forced “prostitution”, or slavery, will still be illegal. But voluntary “prostitution” should be legal. A person should have the right to do what they want with their own body, and to get money for that if they want. Keeping prostitution illegal limits the amount of money women (and men) can make. It also makes it impossible for them to contact the police if they are beaten or raped, for fear the police will arrest them for prostitution. Not to mention, keeps “prostitutes” from joining unions, getting health care, or pensions. Finally, it disregards the needs of many men (and women), especially the widowed elderly, the differently abled, and those facing death, preventing them from having a healthy sex life. Millions of people have been arrested for doing a “crime” that hurts nobody, and both people consent to! It is time to give all Americans the right to make a living however we see fit. “Morals” should have no place in the law, especially when one person’s idea of moral is another’s view of oppression.
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Why even allow Adult Services to continue to exist? Why provide any legitimacy to sick, worthless people who ‘can’t’ find any more productive or valuable work than selling their bodies? Time to consign the trash to the heap and be done with it.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:46 am
Not sure how you can expect newspapers to cover you objectively. You took away a huge portion of newspaper revenues by offering classifieds that are 100x better than what any newspaper offered. They view you as their enemy.
May 10th, 2010 at 2:59 am
Sorry it seems like you’re being picked on. I hope we’re just calling you to an even higher standard. As the Spiderman movies point out: “With great power comes greater responsibility.”
June 17th, 2010 at 5:09 am
In the scheme of all things CL does serve a purpose and that purpose works. I do not agree with all the advertising but I do support you guys. Keep up the good work.
June 18th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
The reasons CL is targeted are easy to see and have been stated in this blog and in some of the feedback. The reasons are not what scare me. It is the reasoning behind them and that they are effective at times.
The pandering and you see every day in the media and in politics. But the driving force behind it in this case is fear mongering. The same fear mongering style that created the patriot act. The same reason nothing is private in our lives today.
Religious groups and prudes who have lived their life being taught sex is bad or you shouldn’t have sex unless you are married. The list can go on and on to what their moral ideas are and why. In the end they use the same tactic of fear mongering to get their point of view heard.
What fears do they use?
. Gays use CL and they will make our youth gay
.There is so much crime on Cl
.People are forced to have sex for cash on CL
.There are so many scams on CL
.You will get mugged if you meet someone on CL
.Let’s name a guy who killed someone the CL killer. Even though out of the hundreds of millions of CL users there are bound to be bad people. I mean c’mon cops have been found guilty of murder do we get rid of all the police?
I could ramble on and on but to sum it up I am glad CL is standing their ground when we have already lost so many rights.