I watch for noteworthy news all day long, and when those typical porn hysteria headlines pop up on Google News repeatedly — like this week’s mass-marketed line about children being exposed to unwanted porn on the scary, uncontrollable internets — I don’t even want to waste a post on them. However, I just caught this item at my other home-blog, Fleshbot: Taking Another Look At That “Ambush Porn” Story, snip:
“In this study, which was conducted via telephone, that problem is magnified because of both the age of the participants and the subject matter discussed. The researchers admit as much: They told Bloomberg that some kids may have ‘characterized exposure incidents as unwanted because they were embarrassed to admit they sought out such material.’ In other words, that 34 percent figure should be viewed with skepticism.
(…) So why is the study getting so much attention? Because it fits into a classic news template: The your-children-are-in-peril story. Journalists know that people pay attention to stories about threats to their kids — they tap into a primal drive to protect one’s children from potential harm. And so news outlets jump all over stories like this, even though a closer look suggests that there may not be as much to worry about as the headlines suggest.” Link.
