The Sleeping Car -- Pornomag: 7 of 7

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[A Media Analysis of the Time Cyberporn Story]

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When the news is driven by entertainment hype, public hysteria, and the need to scoop the competition, minor details such as a reporter's responsibility to the truth get left in the dust. In the case of the Time cyberporn story, a magazine's carelessness may have written a chapter into history. Amid hysteria over children having access to pornography on the Internet, the Communications Decency Act was passed by high margins in Congress shortly after the Time story; it is presently being challenged by the Supreme Court, having been rejected by a lower court as "unconstitutional on its face." Even with multiple detailed critiques from experts in the field debunking almost every aspect of Marty Rimm's research, his study was still featured prominently in an almost entirely fact-less cyberporn TV news story aired on A&E Investigative Reports in January 1996, as President Clinton was preparing to sign the CDA into law (Isenberg 1-5). As Robert Rossney of the San Francisco Chronicle states, "Sadly, it's now an unkillable soundbite: four out of five pictures on the Internet are pornographic" (Rossney C3).

And all this came about because of one person's ability to manipulate the media for his own gain. Marty Rimm knew exactly what buttons he was pushing when he told Philip Elmer-DeWitt that he was "impressed by how I managed, he thought accurately, to characterize his study," and offered him an exclusive on the story. But why was Rimm so bent on national publicity for his study? Surely publication in a scholarly journal as an undergraduate is an accomplishment in itself. Was he merely out to boost his own ego? Mike Godwin of the EFF thinks otherwise. Godwin noticed that Philip Elmer-DeWitt said something very peculiar in his interview with Hotwired:
Hotwired: Is there a link from some conservative group, like the Christian Coalition, to this study?

Elmer-Dewitt: No, there wasn't. Rimm - I didn't even ask him; he volunteered - said "we talked to just about everybody; the one group I didn't want to talk to was the Christian Coalition. He never had any contact with them. There's been a lot of speculation on The Well, that geez, this must have been funded by the Christian Coalition; they must have given Ralph Reed early access to it. As near as I can tell, that's just the kind of crazy talk that goes on The Well.

"Given that there is now strong evidence that the Christian Coalition and other right-wing antiporn activists had advance, detailed knowledge of the study and its likely impact," says Godwin, "one can only wonder why Rimm 'volunteered' that tidbit to Elmer-DeWitt" (Godwin 6). Godwin speculates that Rimm may have had contact with the anti-porn right, including Deen Kaplan, Vice President of the National Coalition for the Protection of Families and Children, who is also, coincidentally, an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal; Godwin theorizes that Rimm may have disavowed involvement with the Right early on to throw Elmer- DeWitt `off the scent' (Godwin 6).

But regardless of Rimm's motives, the fact is that he succeeded, through simply knowing what to say to whom, to be seriously considered by the media establishment and have a Time cover story for a study which had not been peer-reviewed, had been written by an undergraduate, and has yet to gain any critical support from experts in the field. And Time, because of its journalistic values of getting a scoop and playing to the entertainment and shock value desires of American culture, was his willing dupe.

As a letter writer to Time states, "the most dangerous and insidious words in America today [are] `a new study shows'" (Various "Letters" 8). The news media plays a role in selecting what scientific information is presented to the American people as valid. Elmer-DeWitt stated in his interview with Hotwired that "[Donna Hoffman] calls an error the fact that I quote Rimm saying something. Well, Rimm said it! That's not an error on my part" (Brickman 4). When journalists lose sight of their responsibility to the truth in their reporting, their responsibility to not simply report uncritically as fact anything a source tells them, they have fallen victim to sensationalism and are simply the pawns of their sources. And the American people are not served.