Online Media Daily reported on March 11:
Company CEO Jim Buckmaster said this week in a blog post that the site has seen a 90-95% decline in “erotic services” ads in five large cities since it began demanding more information from advertisers last year…
Last week, the Cook County sheriff sued Craigslist for creating a public nuisance by facilitating prostitution. The lawsuit, which seeks an injunction and monetary damages, alleges that the county recently made 156 arrests, at a cost of around $105,000 after monitoring the site.
See also:
Wall Street Journal: “Craigslist Gets Tougher On ‘Erotic Services’ Ads”
New York Times: “As Prostitutes Turn to Craigslist, Law Takes Notice”
On
one recent day…some 9,000 listings were added to the site’s “Erotic
Services” category in the New York region alone: Most offered massage
and escorts, often hinting at more…
Children for Sale on Craigslist
…a
significant percentage of these ads on Craigslist do not advertise
solely “legal escort services” as Craigslist may like to believe.
Instead, a considerable percentage of the ads are a thinly veiled guise
for one of the many faces of human trafficking that exists here in the
United States…
Craigslist: How to Report Exploitation of Minors
New Competitor to Craigslist Rejects Ads for “prostitution services
and other questionable listings”
Call to Action: Ask the Valley Advocate’s New Owner to Drop the Sex Ads
Many
of the escort ads in the Advocate appear to be blatant come-ons for
prostitution. The life of these escorts is miserable… “In one study,
75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide. Prostituted
women comprised 15% of all completed suicides reported by hospitals.” A
great deal of research demonstrates that the adult industry exploits
women, perpetuates sex trafficking, harms communities and trains
abusers…
Editor & Publisher Column: “Arrests Raise Questions About Newspapers Running ‘Prostitution’ Ads” (1/14/09)
Granted, ad revenues are getting tight. Jobs are scarce, as well. But
so long as prostitution is a crime and patronizing a prostitute is also
a crime, should newspapers run ads that clearly hawk prostitution
services? What is the difference between running ads for prostitution
and running ads for illegal gambling or illegal drugs?
MSNBC
Investigates Human Trafficking and Prostitution in the US; Valley
Advocate Advertises “Foreign Fantasies” Where “Everything Goes”
The Village Voice Earns $80,000/Month from Prostitution, Sex Trafficking and other Adult Ads (explicit language)
Orlando Weekly Drops Adult-Services Ads in Wake of Police Sting; “Operation Weekly Shame”
Orlando Sentinel: “Weekly’s publisher: Arrests are payback” (10/23/07)
“When
the video comes out, it will be telling because our officers tell them
about specific sex acts they perform for money and ask how they can get
that across better to their clientele,” Zambouros said…
“First Amendment rights do not protect anyone from committing a crime,” he said.
“New York Press No Longer Marketing Arm for Prostitution/Trafficking”
Another Victory for NOW-NYC: New York Magazine Drops Sex Ads
One
would think that this would be exactly the kind of exploitation the
[Village] Voice would revel in exposing. But because the Voice is free,
it apparently needs the revenue brought in by, this week, 10 pages of
these ads.
And so its press release yammers on about how our
freedoms are “under attack by the Bush administration,” and makes NOW
sound like the Taliban, and finally trots out the same pathetic excuse
New York once made: “If there is evidence that any advertiser in our
pages engaged in…sex slavery…” Blah blah blah.
It’s hard to be part of the solution, when you’re part of the problem.
Pasadena Weekly: “Lives for sale”
“They’re
always a point of concern,” Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian told
the newspaper. “We follow up on them fairly regularly. I have always
been surprised that the [Pasadena] Weekly underwrites the exploitation
of women to some degree.”
Belltown Messenger: “Greed, Lust and Ink”
…the
only motivation for running escort ads in the first place is unbridled
greed-and these supposedly liberal publications can’t have it both ways
when defending the rights of society’s underdogs in their editorial
content…