18.06.2013
The latest newspaper to jump on the burgeoning anti-porn bandwagon is the Sunday Times, which recently put its name to a “symposium” on the “dangers to children of online pornography” in conjunction with the Tory Think-tank Policy Exchange:
The Sunday Times is organising a symposium on the dangers to children of online pornography. The aims of the event, which will take place at the Policy Exchange in London tomorrow, are to raise awareness of the issues surrounding online pornography and provide a forum for a range of experts to discuss the growing crisis caused by its easy access for children. Keynote speakers include: Gail Dines – author of Pornland and Professor of Sociology at Wheelock College, Boston will be talking about… Read more »
02.06.2013
Having parked its [septic] tanks on Google’s lawn, the media’s efforts to generate a full blown moral panic around the existence of online pornography continued this morning with an appearance on the BBC’s Breakfast News programme by Susie Hargreaves, tbe current CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation. To be honest, I wasn’t paying too much at the time but Hargreaves tripped my bullshit detector by casually claiming that the IWF had done some sort of research that apparently showed that 1.5 million people had accidentally run across child porn while surfing teh Interwebs. 1.5 MILLION..? No… there’s something seriously screwy going on there but, of course, one should always check primary sources before dismissing dodgy-looking statistical claims out of hand, so off… Read more »
31.05.2013
In the wake of the convictions of Stuart Hazell and Mark Bridger for sexually motivated murders of children, the papers are awash with speculative commentaries on online child pornography. The Daily Mail (of course) wants to know ‘What WILL it take for Google to block child porn?’ even though it has yet to admit that it’s own efforts to find any were an abject and utterly embarrassing failure. What we need here, and what no one will get from the press, is a sense of perspective, so let’s look at just a few figures that will help put things into context. How big is the Internet? Well, no one really knows and things are changing all the time, so… Read more »
30.05.2013
Yesterday I provided what I believe to be conclusive evidence that a ‘child porn’ video that Amanda Platell claims to have viewed as ‘research’ for an article published online by the Daily Mail on 24th May 2012 and as a double-page spread (pp18-19) in the print edition of the newspaper on 25th May under the headline -
“My journey into the hell that is internet child porn: We asked AMANDA PLATELL to view the websites that twisted the mind of little Tia’s killer”
– is in fact a scene from legally produced and marketed commercial porn video that was originally released sometime between 1997 and 2002 in which the male performer, Michael Stefano, is a very well known figure in the US… Read more »
29.05.2013
Note: I don’t usually do content warnings but I have tagged this post as ‘NSFW’ – ‘Not Safe For Work’ – because of it’s textual content which includes a fairly frank commentary on pornography and, in particular, on a legally produced and marketed commercial porn video, dating from the late 1990s/early 2000s, which appears to depict, at least briefly, a simulated sexual assault on an 18-year-old woman – and if you find that kind of thing upsetting then you may prefer to head elsewhere. There are, however, no explicit images or video footage in this article (so if you’ve landed here while looking for porn, you’re in the wrong place) and the video in question does not depict either actual… Read more »
22.05.2013
For this article I’m going to return to a subject I covered yesterday, that of ‘porn statistics’ or, to be more precise, statistics published widely on both the internet and by newspapers and other media organisation which purport to show that large numbers of children and young people are encountering or accessing pornography via the internet. To quickly recap where we are with this issue so far, yesterday I showed that a ‘statistic’ cited by the Daily Mail while reporting a survey of parents conducted by the National Association of Head Teachers, which found that 90% wanted some sort of default setting on computers and smartphones that would block access to ‘adult material’, actually originated from pretty much nowhere in 2001 in… Read more »
20.05.2013
The Daily Mail are back on the trail of mandatory internet porn blocking, courtesy of a survey by the National Association of Head Teachers which claims that 90% of parents want a default setting on computers and smartphones which prevents the viewing of adult material. And at the very end of the article, the Daily Mail provides a few statistics and a quote from Floella Benjamin, who’s now a Lib Dem Peer:
Research has shown that 90 per cent of children aged eight to 16 have viewed porn online, often unintentionally. The average age a child first sees inappropriate images is 11 and around 80 per cent of teenagers regularly access porn. Younger children are also at risk, as studies have shown that they now… Read more »
20.05.2013
Ahead of today’s House of Commons debate on the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill and the raft of wrecking amendments tabled, for the most part, by Tory MPs, I think that it’s well worth reflecting on exactly where opposition to equal marriage is coming from and, particularly, how that opposition is being organised. As far as public opinion is concerned, YouGov President Peter Kellner lays out the actual position with admirable clarity:
The passions of grass-roots Tories who are bitterly opposed to same-sex marriage are not shared by the wider electorate. Most voters back a change in the law – and very few opponents are willing to switch their votes because of this issue. Overall, YouGov’s latest poll for the Sunday… Read more »
17.05.2013
In just the last week or so we’ve seen Iain Duncan Smith publicly rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority for making claims about the government’s policy of capping benefits that were “unsupported by the official statistics published by the department” and Michael Gove caught using unscientific polls commissioned by UKTV Gold and Premier Inn in an effort to dismiss serious criticism of his new National Curriculum by leading academics. One should not, therefore, be surprised to discover that a poll conducted by Ipsos Mori on behalf of the Royal Statistics Society and Kings College London shows that just 9% of the general public believe that politicians use figures accurately when talking about their policies while just 7% place any kind of trust… Read more »
15.05.2013
Via the BBC I I’ve learned of a new health and safety measure that I fully expect to be doomed to be a dismal failure:
“Screaming” traffic cones are to be used on motorways across England to protect road crews. The cones are fitted with an alarm that “will literally scream” when the cone is struck, the Highways Agency said. The yellow-topped, “lighthouse” style wailers alert road workers to the danger of vehicles coming too close. The agency said they will mainly be used on motorways, meaning students or other traditional cone nemeses are likely to be kept at bay. The cones were unveiled by the agency near Perry Barr in Birmingham. “We will only use them at certain localities,… Read more »
