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7/9/01

The Perils Of Covering Porn

Emmanuelle Richards (Emmanuelle.net) writes this excellent piece for Online Journalism Review (OJR.org). Here are some excerpts:

This cover story by Times senior writer and former theater critic Frank Rich triggered a latent, mostly online debate about the real size of the industry. Cyber porn reporter Luke F-rd wrote that "Rich did exactly what many journalists had done before: trotting out tired and unchecked numbers from a 1998 Forrester Research study ... video sales stats AVN."

Luke F-rd agrees that polite society is embracing porn like never before. "It's true porn has become chic. Howard Stern, the Man Show on Comedy Central feature porn actresses. It's becoming more mainstream in the past five years," he says. "[But] to actually say that the industry is actually mainstream ... I would call that the biggest myth of mainstream media!"

Variety and the Hollywood Reporter don't cover porn, although Variety did for a while in the 1970s, "when it looked like porn was becoming mainstream," said Managing Editor Timothy Gray. The L.A. Daily News doesn't cover this multibillion-dollar industry in its own backyard partly because many of its readers are "conservative," Kaye said.

But this spring new L.A. Times Editor John Carroll judged the industry worthy of more regular coverage and assigned Huffstutter and Ralph Frammolino to the beat. "Ralph had been writing about the entertainment business. I had covered technology," says Huffstutter. "It's a local business. We're both business reporters, so it seemed like something we needed to do."

Whatever the new porn-beat reporters write, you can bet that it will end up linked, excerpted and discussed at l-keford.com, a unique and rather disorganized goldmine of real-life interviews, scoops, scurrilous gossip, typos, essays, corrections and letters from angry lawyers.

"The media don't catch the baloney, the lies, the true horror of this industry that you capture when you go on sets and you mix with the people, and you just see the cavalier way they deal with life," Ford says. "Every one of these people lie. Everyone. They lie by habit. When their lips move, they're saying lies -- they can't help it. ... If the greatest reporter in the world decides to make porn his beat, it would still take him a year or two to get up to speed."

American Demographics' Whelan, for one, says it doesn't feel right to read about porn in The New York Times. "I almost would rather read about the industry in a l-keford.com," says the reporter. "It's more in line with the industry -- sketchy journalist and gossip sheet covering a sketchy industry."

Rodger Jacobs also appreciates the value of Ford's first-hand experience, but wonders if porn can ever truly be covered. Like Breslin, Jacobs praises stories such as "Scenes From My Life in Porn," by former Hustler employee Evan Wright. The screenwriter thinks it's impossible to gain full knowledge of the business and its personalities without a true insider's view:

"Luke can't even do that," Jacobs says. "Did you know that both Norman Mailer and Hunter Thompson have flirted with the idea of writing about the industry and given up? If those two titans can't do it, no one -- except an insider -- can."

Marc writes: luke, have you ever met this emmannuelle woman? you should. nice pics of her

Helpful writes: Yes! A journalistic summit at Hovel de Luca is definitely in order.

Luke replies: Many times. She's married to an American journalist. She wrote the first profile of me, published July 1998.

Mark Kernes writes to QuasarmanRants.com: "Ford is a self-confessed liar, and an even cursory look at a couple of days of his postings should make it clear that he hates porn (or at least is seriously torn between his guilt-ridden lust for it and what he perceives as the requirements of his religion), and he hates (or at least has no respect for) most if not all of the people involved in making it. Moreover, he seems to go out of his way to print deprecating rumors about people in the industry without any regard for whether there's any truth to them. It's my opinion that people who talk to him and/or allow him on their sets are doing the equivalent of cutting their own throats, because chances are good that whatever off-the-cuff remarks they may make will come back to bite them in the ass a few days or weeks later..."

Former AVN writer Randy Kaplan aka Rich C. Leather writes to QuasarmanRants.com: "I can only recall two occasions when AVN suggested that a director NOT be employed to a production company. One time, when Fishbein was in the midst of a lawsuit against Paul Norman for nonpayment, and Norman was engaging in his usual loathsome bad-mouthing, Paul got really pissed off and when someone asked him what he thought about Paul Norman, he did say that he thought they shouldn't hire him because he was a deadbeat asshole. By the way, one of the most frustrating things for me when I was Chief Financial Officer of AVN was what a soft touch and lax collector Fishbein was. He never wanted to dun people, let alone sue them - and of course, in the occasional ebb of cash flow that happens in any small business, I would get really pissed off at having to delay certain expenditures when people owed us TONS of money. And the other time AVN discouraged someone's employment, it was Randy Detroit - something I think anyone would be proud of, for any number of reasons."

Skin Game - Sorry State Of Porn Journalism

Lee Siegel writes for The New Republic online (TNR.com):

It used to be that at the muddy crossroads where money and morality met you also met journalistic skepticism. No longer.

The first is that the power of affluence assimilates even the most amoral currents in our society. The second is that, once these currents are absorbed, their amorality, even their social pathology, become legitimated simply by virtue of the sponsorship of money.

The tone of awed admiration in Modern Painters, of all places, is typical: "pornography is now among the biggest industries on earth: no longer the preserve of shady characters on the edges of the law. It's now produced by major companies. . . ." Don't look for irony. There isn't any.

What jars is the discrepancy between [Martin] Amis's judgment [in Talk magazine] of porn's normalization, deduced from its soaring profits, and his judgment of porn's aberrant nature, deduced from the nature of the porn industry.

After following around a porn star and porn director named Chloe--"the industry's anal queen"--Amis ends with a rescue fantasy:

"No, Chloe you are not a prostitute, not quite.... You are more like a gladiator, a contemporary gladiator. Of course, gladiators were slaves--but some of them won their freedom. And you, I think, will win yours."

From Deep Throat to Little Nell. The appeal to middle-class feeling is the perfect ending to an article that ends up normalizing, even banalizing, porn by emphasizing its revenue-producing power.

You find the same surrender of writerly apprehension to cultural fashion, the same moral miasma, two months later in The New Yorker, with a report from Nevada by Rebecca Mead titled "American Pimp: How to Make an Honest Living from the Oldest Profession." The very subtitle betrays Mead's confusion. For the subject of the article, one Dennis Hof, the owner of the Moonlite Bunnyranch, does not appear from Mead's depiction to be an especially honest man. We learn toward the end of the article that, Hof's declarations of concern for his "girls'" futures notwithstanding, he has had, during the few days that Mead was with him, sex with at least five different female employees, "including Barely Legal Mel, a skinny nineteen-year-old whom Hof fondly refers to as 'a pedophile's dream.'" How much of a choice do these women, who depend on Hof for their livelihoods, have in responding to his advances? If Mead has misgivings, she isn't sharing them: She reports Hof's couplings with his employees without a trace of skepticism.

Rather, Mead bouncily tells us that Hof likes "to mix business with pleasure." She doesn't seem to be thinking of the existence or not of the employees' pleasure. She concludes her reportage by quoting one of Hof's prostitutes: "'I love men and I love sex and I love money,' she said, and Hof smiled with satisfaction at the sight of his top girl making another sale." Pimp and prostitute are in complete harmony on the question of their occupations, and their relationship, and the satisfying congruence between sex and commercialism. Here is yet another smash-up of ethical sense. For all of Mead's intimations throughout the article of the slime beneath Hof's smoothness, she buys completely into his sliminess. The "honest" living--read profitable living--is more important than the honesty of the man. The market, after all, has smiled on Hof, and this is, in the end, an article about how the market, like the wise man of yesteryear's literature, has come through all the sordid obstacles in its path.

Mead is normalizing prostitution as just another kind of business, rather than exposing the business culture to the light of its own internal contradictions (i.e. that a laissez-faire economy produces political freedom at the same time as it replaces social bonds with deplorable dependencies). In fact, by the time she's finished, Mead seems even to have assimilated Hof's commodified perspective--"Amy... is thirty-five, though parts of her appear to be of more recent vintage."

The pièce-de-non-résistance, though, was Frank Rich's interminable cover story on the porn industry, "Naked Capitalists," which ran in the May 20th issue of The New York Times Magazine. Rich... performs the function at the paper of reducing every social and political phenomenon he encounters to a form of commercial entertainment, and then, with great urbanity, shaking his head over the fact that all Americans seem to care about is being commercially entertained.

To treat porn neutrally is to pretend that a favorable consensus toward it exists where one does not.

The term "obscenity" encompasses the question of exploitation and degradation, and the question is at least as ethically and legally valid today as it was then--but it's just not culturally hip to ask it. Not when porn's accountants present such impressive figures.

In fact, porn's profit margins put Rich into a kind of malarial fever, exciting him to Homeric catalogues of sums and figures, though he quotes the same statistics as everyone else (he even talks to some of the same people Amis did).

All this revenue, for Rich, means that the people who make the porn are just like you and me: "If the people who make and sell pornography are this 'normal'--and varied--might not the audience be, too?" What convinces Rich of their "normalcy" is that many of them went to good schools. Dartmouth, for example. Appearances matter a great deal to this journalist. And the porn people are, they assure Rich, good parents: "The Orensteins [Steve Orenstein owns a porn production company] have spoken to a therapist about the inevitable day of reckoning with their child."

Such a neutral presentation of the data is an acceptance of the data. It carries forward Rich's purpose, which is to celebrate the glorious assimilating and normalizing power of the marketplace. Rich is a little embarrassed by his moral position, and so he ends on a moralizing note, despite the fact that he began his article by protesting that he "did not go [to the porn studios] to construct a moral brief." He concludes homiletically, but with a transparently disingenuous indictment of moralists: "Moralists like to see in pornography a decline in our standards, but in truth it's an all-too-ringing affirmation of them... there may be no other product in the entire cultural marketplace that is more explicitly American."

Banish porn, then and you banish America. Unlike Amis, though, Rich wants to give the impression of using porn to indict American society--porn is an "all-too-ringing affirmation" of our declining standards. But since he has spent many thousands of words normalizing porn, it's hard to see his argument as an indictment. Rather, it is an all-too-ringing affirmation of the business culture's power to assimilate porn, and to brainwash journalists.

Diverse forms of sexuality and entertainment are not slowly being conventionalized by the marketplace, or by changing definitions of normalcy, as Amis, Mead, and Rich would have us believe. On the contrary. It's the social pathologies of selfishness and greed that are now being justified by obsequious reports of the public embrace of what was previously unacceptable.

XXX writes OJR.org: Why *doesn't* the Daily News of Los Angeles cover porn more intensely? It would seem to be a subject that crosses conservative/liberal lines (don't Republicans get aroused?); is a big business, if not as big as people claim; and is an area the San Fernando Valley-based Daily News could take on the Los Angeles Times and kick some ass. Surely the $30K-something young reporters at the Daily News would enjoy sinking their teeth into this industry as much as managed care, telecom or some of the other industries they cover.

Rodger Jacobs writes OJR.org: Whether we like it or not, porn is as firmly entrenched in our contemporary culture as the Internet itself is. Taking that as a statement of fact, I do believe that, yes, the industry should be covered -- to the best of their abilities -- by mainstream press. I've heard many mainstream editors, however, complain that an article about porn that is not to some degree negative in its assessment could be interpreted as an "endorsement" of the industry.

Subject: An open letter to Margold, PAW and FSC

From: Wayne Gordon <wayneg@phoenix.net>

Date: Tue, May 12, 1998 18:51 EDT

rec.arts.movies.erotica newsgroup:

To whom it may concern, but especially that cowardly, lurking lump known as Bill Margold:

I understand that the "collective body" of the FSC and PAW have deemed it proper to ban Luke F-rd from their offices. While this is certainly within your "collective rights", it strikes me as particularly counterproductive. Question...If Luke F-rd had not made public his contention that Marc Wallice was HIV positive, would he (Marc) still be working today? Are FSC and PAW members forbidden to access Luke's website, in kind? If so, how else might your organization find out what's going on?

Will the FSC and PAW subject itself to the questions of other media entities? Will they endure the hard-hitting investigative reporting of, say, AVN? (snicker)

I fail to see how banning Ford can do anything but damage your reputation, shaky as it is, for being honest and open. Did not a single member of PAW or FSC hear the rumors of Wallice's positive status? Why did it take Luke's reportage to force him to get tested under these circumstances? Sharon Mitchell initially stated that she believed Wallice to be the "likely patient zero" for the recent HIV outbreak, but since then appears to be hedging. Will a full report be given, upon it's completion, of the results of any strain-matching regarding Wallice and the others? The greater the extent of PAW/FSC's openness regarding these and other matters, the quicker performers can feel comfortable about the conditions under which they work, not to mention the public's ease of mind when renting or buying adult material.

I, for one, find it extremely discomfiting to rent adult material if I have the impression that the performers are ignorant of issues relevant to their work, or if information is being withheld, for whatever reason, especially by the parties who would claim to be the protectors of the on-screen talent. Outdated or incorrect information is a greater sin still, in my eyes.

Please see below.

As to Bill Margold's comments regarding the irrelevance of the internet, as he so ignorantly perceives it, I can only laugh. If he has problems with people using "net-names" rather than their legal ones, he need only look (surprise!) in his own backyard, the adult entertainment industry, to see where the use of pseudonyms may be appropriate for privacy and anonymity. As to his perception that the newsgroup RAME is a cowardly and dastardly bunch, he needs to realize that it is a free and open forum with postings by folks from all walks of life. No one who reads or posts there necessarily agrees with all of it's content, nor are they expected to. There are no limits to the subjects discussed and opined upon in the group, so long as they pertain to the subject of adult erotica. What's so evil about that? Lastly, as to his plan to "use" Ford after the summer to get out information via the net, this strikes me as hypocritical in the basest sense. If the internet consists of so many "fools", why use it ever? If it, and Luke, are to be "used" at all, why not now as well as later? Why not use the FSC web site? Some of the, errr, "kids" in the industry know how to use a mouse and keyboard, I'd venture.

In closing, I hope that the FSC sees fit to update the information presented on it's own web site. Is it still true that?....

(Quoting from the FSC site...)

"Actors who are known to be drug abusers-I.V or otherwise-and who refuse treatment are subsequently banned from performing. Often this information comes from other performers or producers who are as concerned about the health integrity of the adult entertainment industry as they are with creating entertaining products. Again, such self-policing measures often prove to be a reliable safety-net beneath the industry's other safety policies."

What of the rumors of Tricia Devereaux's and Brooke Ashley's I.V. drug use? Marc Wallice? Were they ever asked to take a drug test? Or is this simply self-serving bullshit?

As well...

(Quoting again....God, this is a whopper of a lie!..)

"To this date, there has not been one recorded case of an active performer in the heterosexual industry testing HIV positive in the contemporary era."

Still true? Well, then, why not update?

I can hardly wait.

Furthermore...

(Another quote....)

"Even with proper testing, the use of condoms by actors is commonplace in the production of adult video, and is solely the option of the actor."

The FSC dictate for condoms now negates this statement, does it not?

Finally...

(One more quote....)

"In communicating with these organizations, it has been made clear that the specific practices associates with the making of adult films are thought to be substantially responsible for the absence of HIV within this community."

In light of recent events and the circumstances which caused them, or may have, according to talk in the industry, some rewording of this may be appropriate...how about...

"Despite our bloated hype and bullshit, we f---ed up and now 4 performers are known HIV positive. Whoops!"

Regards,

Wayne Gordon

P.S. : Since B. Margold also sees inherent dishonesty in using famous or pithy quotes in one's signature, and implies moral superiority because he only quotes himself, let me now do the same, and quote myself, in tribute to Mr. Margold....

"Indeed if as he says "God Created Man, Bill Margold created himself," we are most fortunate that God had the foresight to make this universe one which, as the cosmological physicists tell us, is ever-expanding, the better odds that his ego will not one day outstrip it's vastness and crush us all into anti-matter and sub-atomic particles..." -Wayne Gordon in RAME 5/12/98

How 'bout *them* apples, Bill?

From the 5/98 AVN:

The Trickle Effect

Three Stars

Ultra Image Productions: D. Shawn Ricks. Sindee Coxx, Julie Rage, Nicole London, Mila, Ericka Lockett, Tony Tedeschi, Valentino, Nick East, Alec Metro, Paul Cox; Luke F-rd (Non-Sex Role). 80 min.

Luke F-rd plays an unscrupulous writer (type-casting?) researching female ejaculation, who is in cahoots with whore-turned-literary agent Sindee Coxx. Nicole London provides source material with spurter Ericka Lockett (if you yearn to hear Joey Lauren Adams scream, "Feels so good up inside my cocchie," Lockett's the peep-voiced double-insertion dildo gal for you). Alex Metro and Tony Tedeschi get seperate cracks at Coxx, and Mila provides an aural carnival in a winner with Nick East and Valentino.

By Susie Mid-America

Subj: Re: Russ Hampshire: Give Luke A Chance!

Date: 98-05-07 17:19:02 EDT

From: markkernes@avn.com (Mark Kernes)

To: luzdedos1@aol.com

> I saw Jasmine for the first time in two years at the Erotica LA fair and> noticed that she had lost weight. I wondered if she had been doing cocaine?

How gracious of you. It's attitudes like this that have "endeared" you to so many in the industry.

> Bill said that Jeffrey Douglas, FSC > chair, also commended me for my Friday work.

Bill would be wrong. Free Speech, Douglas and just about everyone I know in the industry think you're a jerk, and you may rest assured that Douglas in particular has not commended your work in the slightest.

> Owner Russ > Hampshire decided to give me a chance, and we spent about an hour together > talking and touring his awesome facility.

Proving only that Russ Hampshire is a much nicer guy than people give him credit for - and much nicer to you than you deserve. But perhaps now you'll stop slandering him quite so frequently?

AVN's Mark Kernes

rec.arts.movies.erotica newsgroup:

Subject: Re: Zane Bankrupt?

From: gshaffer@erols.com (GS)

Date: Sat, May 9, 1998 11:00 EDT

If Luke F-rd was even remotely a newbie George, your comments would have a lot of merit but he's not. He is, at least in his own opinion, a journalist covering the adult video scene. He currently has over 5% of the current posts on my news server and has been posting at similar levels for around two years. He has brought some timely and accurate information to r.a.m.e and also misinformation. Regardless of the accuracy or inaccuracy of his posts, he seems to delight in provoking the industry insiders and someone will nearly always, in Nick's own words, "bite the bait." Sometimes the results are entertaining but often simply boring but they are part of the dyanmics of r.a.m.e, like it or not.

BTW if there were a way of measuring the thickness of his skin, Luke would probably belong in the record books. Its unlikely anything anyone could say to him would scare him into silence.

www.hartwilliams.com: "...Luke's still doing a better job of "porn" journalism than 99% of the hacks who do it now, or did it when. See how much current coverage you find in any of the other men's magazines, and then hold the High and Coruscating Torch of Journalism up to better illuminate the Olympian Reportage within the field.

"...many of Luke's citations of written industry sources (i.e. star "interviews") are from articles that were either half fiction or made of whole cloth.

"There IS (generally speaking) no "porn journalism" -- usually it's puffery aimed at the mutual edification of magazine and video producer that's much like sports writing: advertising masquerading as journalism. Virtually ALL porn writing exists to sell product.

"It's one thing to importune for a perfect world. In the meantime, just a reasonably adequate world is something to shoot for.

"And, until recently, "porn journalism" has been an oxymoron on a par with "military intelligence" or "sports writing," or even "Free Speech Coalition.""

Vince Clarion:

AVN does not publish righteous reviews, any more than Car and Driver publishes righteous test drive articles. The difference, is that most cars these days are pretty good; but most adult vids are pretty bad.

AVN also 'reports' an industry that has quietly been 'fixed.'

Sacramento didn't expunge the criminal element from old-time porn; they just passed a battery of narrow statutes that reigned these guys in, so the local populace wouldn't loose its mind on election day. Reigned them in, and also gave them special recognition, so they wouldn't have to compete against new business. The Hollywood 'family' gets to control what exists; provided they keep their noses relatively clean.

These semi-reconstituted hoods find the girls and "represent" them. Sacramento says that nobody else can get a license to supply talent. They find the seed money-- other money is around, but it has to channel through them, or those 'independent' productions don't get distributed. They control distribution -- other distributors might be around, but they get busted a lot unless they carry videos that are informally approved by these Hollywood powers-that-be.

All this does not create a business climate that encourages much courageous and independent reporting. Surprise: At AVN, not much happens.

SO, bottom line: If you want to read an honest review; look here, on RAME. NOT AVN.

rec.arts.movies.erotica newsgroup

Subject:

Re: Actors real names and Luke F-rd...

Tue, 09 Jun 98 16:15:16

yammer66@hotmail.com

In article <rame.897336006p19129@bash>,

wmz@hartwilliams.com wrote:

> The fact> that porn stars' real names have shown up is very often attributable> to simple incompetence on the part of editorial/writing staff.

I hear you, but it seems dangerous to me to rationalize journalistic restrictions for all based on the (real or perceived) competency of some.

> The fact that a LOT of people seem to miss in all of this is that> porn stars often don't have a personal problem with the revelation> of their real names, but they are trying to protect their families> who DO have a problem with being associated with porn.

Again, I hear you, but to play devil's advocate, does non-disclosure really protect as much as disclosure? Might not the stigma of porn be reduced by the knowledge among stimatizers that a wicked sinful porn star is, in fact, a product of their very own family culture and religious neighbourhood? I realize that this "social good" argument butts up against "personal privacy" rights and thus has to lose (cf. the "outing" debate).

> So, Hotshot Journalists, balance this: Does the public's> "Right to Know" overwhelm the legitimate concern of performers> for the safety of themselves, their significant others and> their families for their jobs, their (non porn) reputations and > (in extreme cases)their safety?

No. But, Porn Professional, consider: Do your entirely understandable privacy requests exacerbate the aura of underground criminality that surrounds and stimatizes your work?

> And tell me, please, how many journalists you've ever met who> give a flying f--- for the public, per se?

Not many. But I care less what the journalist says at a bar about me, the goofy reader, as long they do their job correctly, which is to provide accurate, well-documented information that discloses their sources, biases, and findings, so that they can be relied upon to make decisions that affect my life.

I do feel that entertainment in general is overcovered, and is simply intellectual parasitism.

I also agree with you that cover names provide the porn performer with a limited amount of protection against recognition (there is the matter of their faces being, at least in most cases, their own) and that there are valid concerns about disclosure.

However, it is the purposes to which the disclosure is put (e.g. stalking, harassing, discriminating, etc.) and not the disclosure itself, which are fearsome. After all, no one cares if Walter Matthau was formerly Walter Mattanchansky.

For all these reasons, I can't follow your criticism of name-disclosers (Luke F-rd et al) to your conclusion, which dismisses the entire concept of professional journalism, as an ideal.

Ron Yamauchi