The Sleeping Car -- Pornomag: Page 1 of 7

ornomag
[A Media Analysis of the Time Cyberporn Story]

Page 1 of 7 -- Note to Reader

Pornomag:
A Media Analysis of the Time Cyberporn Story
By Jer Welter (aka J. Jester) -- Spring 1997

In its July 3, 1995 issue, Time magazine published an article entitled "On a Screen Near You: Cyberporn." The article focuses on a study to be published in the forthcoming issue of the Georgetown Law Journal; the study, "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway," is billed in the Time article as "an exhaustive study of online porn" (Elmer-DeWitt, "Cyberporn," 38), and as "a gold mine for psychologists, social scientists, computer marketers and anybody with an interest in human sexual behavior" (ibid. 42). What the article does not mention is that the study was performed by an undergraduate student, was never peer-reviewed, and was in fact not made available to the public at all prior to publication of the Time article, through an agreement between Time, the Law Journal, and the study's author, Marty Rimm.

As soon as the study did become publicly available, its methods and conclusions were savaged by many in the Internet research community. Philip Elmer-DeWitt, the author of the article, had known about some of the criticisms of the study in the week before Time's publication, but had not published any of them because they were based on an abstract of the study; nor did he, however, provide a copy of the study to the critic, because of the secrecy agreement with Rimm and the Law Journal.

In addition, critics pointed out many flaws and misleading statements in the Time article itself. And these distortions were magnified in debate on the Senate floor when Senator Charles Grassley used the article as a source for his blatantly incorrect assertion that "83.5 percent of all computerized photographs available on the Internet are pornographic" (United States S9017). In the resulting debate that ensued in the print media and online, many voices on both sides had strong biases and made false assertions and personal attacks. This paper will study Time's presentation of the information, the factors influencing its presentation, and the results of its reporting.