Sex In The Public Square - The New York Times Sets It Straight - Comments

No apologies necessary...

Elizabeth — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:33:57 -0700

Chris, you have nothing to apologize for. I am so glad you posted that piece about the correcting of the article. I'd missed it altogether, and it's so important! I just wanted to link back to some of what had come before on this site and on BNG.

I agree with you: when that piece came out I think many of us were so excited that we cut the Times a lot of slack. It appeared, on the surface, to do two important things that previous coverage hadn't done: 1, place significant emphasis on sex worker voices and 2, listen to women doing comparable work rather than trying to compare the conditions of one group of workers to another. Unfortunately, as we learned later through BNG and now more officially from the Times through your post, it had in fact not really done either.

Thanks for keeping us updated!

I apologize, Elizabeth. I

Chris — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:41:53 -0700

I apologize, Elizabeth. I should have been more explicit about the fact that the reactions overall were ambivalent; I just wanted to highlight the fact that after all the ream of crap that came out, this was the one article that got some positive response from people who mattered.

Mixed reviews

Elizabeth — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:37:45 -0700

For what it's worth that initial Times story about the "double lives of high-end call girls" had mixed reviews on both this site and Bound, Not Gagged. Shortly after it came out a piece appeared on Bound, Not Gagged posted on behalf of Faith O'Donnell criticizing the peace. A regular contributor posted praise for the story on that site and this one. When I saw the praise for the story posted here I posted a link back to the BNG post criticizing the story. So, feelings about that story have been mixed since it originally appeared. I'm glad to see that the Times has taken it's responsibility seriously and has truncated the story and posted an editor's comment explaining the massive correction. I'm sorry to see that so little is left. That could have been avoided had they taken the issue of sex work and sex worker's voices seriously from the start, of course.

But it brings to mind another issue, and that is that people who are trying hard "not to offend" sometimes make mistakes because they don't understand the nuances of the language they are using. The editor's comment notes that one of the reporters used the term "sex worker" which is the term all three women used to describe their various kinds of work. If that reporter was using the term because he deemed it the "politically correct" term to use when one means "prostitute" without recognizing that it applies to a range of workers, he did a disservice to his readers as well as to the people whose lives he was reporting.

We need accuracy and precision in language and in reporting. When it comes to sex work issues the mainstream media has not done a great job with either. I'm glad to see them correcting themselves. That does represent a huge step forward. But I hope that translates into actual lessons learned and not just a sign that there will be more apologies and corrections forthcoming.

The New York Times Sets It Straight

Chris — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:51:39 -0700

Sarah Jenny Bleviss brought this Editors' Note in the New York Times to our attention, in which the paper admits to serious reporting errors in its coverage of sex workers. An entire two-thirds of the original article has been deleted from the article, which supposedly profiled three "high class call girls" in New York. It turns out, though, that two of the women were sex workers but not prostitutes: