O’Reilly Features CMI YouTube Porn Report
By Matthew Philbin | June 18, 2009 | 10:21
On June 17, FNC’s “O’Reilly Factor” focused a “Viewer Warning” segment on the Culture & Media Institute’s new Special Report: “Blue Tube: Four Reasons to Keep Your Kids Away From YouTube.”
“A new study by the Media Research Center – a conservative group, but an accurate group – indicates that pornographic content is available to kids on YouTube pretty much all the time,” host Bill O’Reilly said.
Amanda Carpenter of the Washington Times, “The Factor’s” regular Internet correspondent, explained some of the study findings. “If you put in a search term like ‘porn,’ into the YouTube site,” she said, “you’ll come up with 330,000 different hits. And, while the Web site says it warns … it bans, excuse me … explicit pornography, there are tons of things out there that resemble, you know, soft-core type of porn, girls stripping, allusions to lesbianism, fetishes. And they say its porn – they advertise it as porn. Other pornographers put links to their own real sites that are pornographic.”
O’Reilly asked about the lack of safeguards that the CMI study uncovered. “So say a 12-year-old wants to see this stuff,” he said. “All they have to do is lie about their age, right?”
“YouTube has taken some steps to kind of appease the family-friendly crowd,” Carpenter responded. “This is what the Media Research Center’s biggest complaint is. They put up a registration thing where you have to say you’re 18 to view sexually suggestive content. But that’s pretty easy to defeat.”
Carpenter also pointed out one of the hidden dangers CMI encountered in the study, saying, “If you are a child on the site and, say, you put in a search for ‘Aladdin,’ there’s a popular video that comes up that dubs over the actual clips of the “Aladdin” movie to make a type of pornographic-themed film. So your child, searching for something very innocent, could come across something very disturbing.”
Wrapping up the segment, O’Reilly said, “We do these stories to warn people what’s happening in our culture. This is the down-side of the Internet.”
“A new study by the Media Research Center – a conservative group, but an accurate group – indicates that pornographic content is available to kids on YouTube pretty much all the time,” host Bill O’Reilly said.
Amanda Carpenter of the Washington Times, “The Factor’s” regular Internet correspondent, explained some of the study findings. “If you put in a search term like ‘porn,’ into the YouTube site,” she said, “you’ll come up with 330,000 different hits. And, while the Web site says it warns … it bans, excuse me … explicit pornography, there are tons of things out there that resemble, you know, soft-core type of porn, girls stripping, allusions to lesbianism, fetishes. And they say its porn – they advertise it as porn. Other pornographers put links to their own real sites that are pornographic.”
O’Reilly asked about the lack of safeguards that the CMI study uncovered. “So say a 12-year-old wants to see this stuff,” he said. “All they have to do is lie about their age, right?”
“YouTube has taken some steps to kind of appease the family-friendly crowd,” Carpenter responded. “This is what the Media Research Center’s biggest complaint is. They put up a registration thing where you have to say you’re 18 to view sexually suggestive content. But that’s pretty easy to defeat.”
Carpenter also pointed out one of the hidden dangers CMI encountered in the study, saying, “If you are a child on the site and, say, you put in a search for ‘Aladdin,’ there’s a popular video that comes up that dubs over the actual clips of the “Aladdin” movie to make a type of pornographic-themed film. So your child, searching for something very innocent, could come across something very disturbing.”
Wrapping up the segment, O’Reilly said, “We do these stories to warn people what’s happening in our culture. This is the down-side of the Internet.”
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