Does Your Media Support Trafficking?
More disturbing human trafficking information from the href=”http://www.polarisproject.org/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,108/”Polaris Project blog:
In my previous post, I referred to a policy report on “Paper Pimps,” describing advertisers for the commercial sex industry. Paper pimps are the enablers of the sexual slavery and exploitation that occurs within the context of the broader industry. Brothels disguised as massage parlors have been advertised in The Washington Post, which I learned through public postings online from the men who seek commercial sex, based on their reading of those advertisements in The Post.
During a meeting with representatives of The Washington Post’s Advertising Department in 2005, they said that if they knew there was illegal activity occurring in these “massage parlors,” they would take the advertisements down. Did they know that journalists within The Washington Post have already reported on the illicit nature of these massage parlors advertised in their own paper?
Over the span of at least ten years, The Post reporters have documented police investigations on massage parlors charged with prostitution throughout the capital region, including Arlington County (1995), Howard County (1996), Montgomery County (2001), Bethesda (2003), the District of Columbia (2006), and many others in between. The advertisements of these locations usually come down temporarily after reports of investigation, but often resurface weeks later sometimes under a changed name at the same address.
Many of these advertised locations have also been investigated for human trafficking. In 1994, The Washington Post reported that immigration officials, FBI, and DC police raided a massage parlor in Dupont Circle and found two young teenage victims of sex trafficking from Southeast Asia. More than ten years later in 2005, Allan Lengel of The Washington Post reported on the multi-state federal investigation of a sex trafficking ring run through numerous massage parlors along the East Coast, including the DC area. The DC massage parlor advertisements were taken out of the Sports section that day only to have some pop up again weeks later.
Our meeting with The Washington Post’s Advertising Department was unsuccessful.
I picked up today’s paper and saw that while there were only seven advertisements for commercial sex-oriented massage parlors in the Sports section, The Washington Post was still accepting such ads. I attribute the decrease in overall ads (which was up to 35 at one of its high points in 2002) mostly to the work of the DC Task Force on Human Trafficking and partly due to the general state of the economy.
I believe it is possible to maintain the constitutional right to freedom of expression while also protecting the common good. Undoubtedly, the balance almost always comes with some type of cost. The Washington Post was receiving over $2 million in ad revenue from illicit massage parlors at a high point (based on estimates from November 1, 2002 to November 10, 2003). Although The Post would not be foregoing as much revenue today with the DC Task Force’s impact on local human trafficking operations, it should still take a principled stand and not accept the advertisements altogether. The Los Angeles Times took that step in 1998 when it stopped accepting “gentlemen’s club” advertisements. Jerry Bluestein, Advertising Standards Coordinator, stated that advertisers “whose principal business is to provide an overtly sexual service or experience are unwelcome even in this poor economy.”
In 2006, even the Ombudsman of The Washington Post, Deborah Howell, agreed that the paper should join The Los Angeles Times and its peers (The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Boston Globe), by not facilitating the sexual exploitation of women through these advertisements.
Help end The Washington Post’s support for and advertising of brothels by letting them know that it is unacceptable and inexcusable. Click here to take action now and tell the Vice President of Advertising that they should stop advertising brothels immediately.
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