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United States

Big business has porn ties
Corporate involvement exposed

In an October report on the big business behind the $10-billion-a-year pornography industry in the United States, the New York Times shed light on the people, corporations, and business practices involved in a growing effort to capitalize on an obsession with sex.

The lengthy Times report was titled “Erotica Inc.—A special report” and subtitled “Technology sent Wall Street into market for pornography.” While many Americans associate pornography with flamboyant merchants such as Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine, the Times revealed that more respectable firms such as the General Motors Corporation are now engaged in peddling graphic sex films; indeed GM now sells more erotic films than Flynt does. Through its DirecTV subsidiary, GM has 8.7 million Americans buying some $200 million a year in pay-per-view sex films via satellite.

The communications giant AT&T also offers a hard-core sex channel called the Hot Network through its cable service, despite the objections of some of its investors. And EchoStar Communications, the second largest satellite provider (heavily backed by Rupert Murdoch —a member of the papal equestrian order, the Knights of St. George) outdoes Playboy in the sex business, according to the Times. Other major corporate players include Time Warner, Liberty Media, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment, and Murdoch’s News Corporation.

Forty percent of all US hotel rooms are also equipped to offer porn. Marriott International, run by several prominent Mormons, and Hilton are raking in huge profits from the porn they offer in their rooms to guests. The Times reports that hotel industry statistics indicate that at least half of all guests buy the porn movies. The article mentions that the Omni hotel chain has decided to veto pornography offerings in their rooms, at a loss of $1.8 million per year in porn revenue. Omni received 50,000 calls and letters of support for its decision.

The removal of technical barriers is driving the increased demand and spurring sales of obscene material. With the advent of the videocassette recorder, sales in pornographic films shot up; with satellite pay-for-view there was another surge. Now the Internet has given the porn trade a new life, generating millions of dollars in new revenue.

Debt relief approved
But measure allows abortion funding

The US House of Representatives passed a massive foreign aid bill that removes restrictions on funding of groups that perform abortions overseas, but also includes millions for the forgiveness of debts of the world’s poorest countries.

One of the last of the 13 appropriations bills Congress was required to pass for the fiscal year that began October 1, the bill provides $425 million for population-control groups, lifting the ban on funding for groups that advocate or participate in abortions. As part of the compromise on the funding ban, the bill includes a delay in funding until February 15. The pro-life representatives banked on their hope that Texas Gov. George W. Bush would be elected and issue a new order reinstating the ban.

Meanwhile, $435 million of the $14.9 billion bill has been allocated for US participation in an international program that offers billions of dollars in debt relief to three dozen of the most heavily indebted poor countries in the world. International debt relief was a key theme when Pope John Paul II announced that 2000 would be a Jubilee Year, and various religious and international organizations picked up the idea.

Confessions on the air
“Shock jocks” give different stories

Two radio disc jockeys at a Massachusetts heavy-metal station were suspended in October after they refused to stop airing what they claimed were secretly taped confessions from a Catholic church.

Disc jockey Tom Birdsey and his partner, known only as “Rocko,” said on the air that they received the tapes—concerning a gambler, a child abuser, and a woman having an extramarital affair—from a listener. WAAF-FM program director Dave Douglas later said the confessions were faked, that station management was in on the joke, and that the two DJs were suspended after they refused to stop airing them. “I really didn’t give (the bit) much thought, being as we’re in the entertainment business and this all fell under the umbrella of some of the crazy things we do,” Douglas said. But later the two accused DJs contradicted that statement, insisting that the tapes were real confessions.

The Archdiocese of Boston called the actions outrageous, regardless of whether the tapes were a joke or not. “I cannot believe any individual would violate the sanctity, confidentiality, and intimacy of the confessional,” spokesman John Walsh told the Boston Herald newspaper. “Such people would be beneath contempt. I can’t imagine any responsible media outlet would play such a thing.”