“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?”
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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Comments Policy
I actually agree
June 18, 2009 - 09:27 ET by shawn228I believe in Youtubes free speech, but they need to do a better of job of filtering results. It should be up to parents to monitor what their children watch, but unfortunately that is getting harder and harder these days with whats out there.
He had my vote
This is one reason why I
June 18, 2009 - 10:00 ET by motherbeltThis is one reason why I don't think kids should have computers in their rooms.
They should be using the internet where their parents can keep an eye on things. I would always walk by from time to time to see what was on the screen. I also made my daughter leave her cell phone in the kitchen when she went up to bed at night (when she was in high school).
Too many teenagers think they have a "right to privacy." I told my kids that meant from the government, not from their parents.
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows. -Bart Simpson
I'd add to that
June 18, 2009 - 16:15 ET by mbuelTV's.
There is NO reason a kid needs to have a TV in their bedroom.
The free market works, Government controls always fail.
TV
June 19, 2009 - 20:03 ET by easygoerI have two brothers and two sisters (all younger) and we each had our own rooms and my parents didn't allow any of us to have a TV in them. Even when I was home from college for the summer, my father still said no. My house, my rules, ya know. I hated it the time, of course, but he was right. He was right about most things.
Too Bad
June 18, 2009 - 09:54 ET by JJoujanO'Reilly sometimes comes up with useful information but so much of the time he is a belligerent self-satisfied bully who gives conservatives a bad name, and liberals rarely listen to him. He is all about the ratings and selling his books.
And your point
June 18, 2009 - 09:59 ET by motherbeltAnd your point is........?
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows. -Bart Simpson
O'Reilly is not a
June 18, 2009 - 10:57 ET by robert108O'Reilly is not a conservative; he is an American populist who goes after both Republicans and Democrats. Since there is far more corruption in the Democrat Party, he ends up talking about them more, which is why lefties like to call him a conservative, but his position on gas prices shows how he's not even close to being conservative.
Lefties don't listen to him because he tells the truth, and lefties hate that.
O'Reilly
June 18, 2009 - 12:41 ET by DontFeedTheTrollsselling his books
Yep, he loves selling his books. So the profits can be sent to charity. How evil.
D
Keep the ILLEGALS out, join NumbersUSA to send free faxes to your reps.
MSNBC
June 18, 2009 - 11:06 ET by easygoerOn today's Morning Joe Mika Brezinski and Willie Geist mocked O'Reilly for this segment: http://tinyurl.com. Love Amanda Carpenter. She's smart and cute.
It says video no longer
June 18, 2009 - 11:26 ET by motherbeltIt says video no longer available.
PS...I love Amanda Carpenter too.
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows. -Bart Simpson
Porn filtering software
June 18, 2009 - 10:56 ET by bedmondsonThis is interesting because youtube is not filtered as adult material on webfilters for children. Does anyone know if good filtering/blocking software could filter that youtube porn out or not?
Also did anyone else notice just how much of this porn he showed on his program instead of talking about it? Is his show meant to be watched by the family or just adults?
Good morning bed
June 18, 2009 - 11:13 ET by cocodrieWhy should a website promoting itself to children be allowed to send cnildren harmful material?
Why are you twisting the argument away from the problem of child safety to the person revealing the problem?
Do you actually approve of these people targeting children?
Jesus Loves You so much He died for you
no no
June 18, 2009 - 11:18 ET by bedmondsonI was asking if anyone knew about web filtering software. I would assume any responsible parent with children probably has some form of technology to block harmful material from their children. I do not have children and therefore have never used this tech. They should remove it definitely, that is not the issue I was asking. geeze.
Also, if you believe youtube is targeting children with this porn, is Bill not doing the same thing on his show my letting all the children watching it at the time see it and know where to get it? At least on youtube you have to say you are at least 18, Bill's show as no warning.
The O'Reilly Factor is
June 18, 2009 - 11:24 ET by motherbeltThe O'Reilly Factor is political commentary. It's not meant to be a "family show."
How many kids do you know who are interested in watching Bill O'Reilly?
And I didn't see the related story, but I'm betting the videos were blurred appropriately, as they usually do when stuff like that shows up on news.
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows. -Bart Simpson
The O'Reilly Factor is
June 18, 2009 - 12:11 ET by bedmondsonNo, you don't understand the problem. On youtube you can not post nude "porn" but you can post people kissing, groping.... So no, Bill did not blur anything and showed everything that you can see on youtube verbatim.
Is youtube meant to be a "family website"? Also, Bill wrote a whole book for kids. Of course he wants them to watch.
OK you're right. I didn't
June 18, 2009 - 14:08 ET by motherbeltOK you're right. I didn't understand (I said I didn't see it). In that case, O'Reilly shouldn't have broadcast it. If he thinks kids shouldn't see it on YouTube, he shouldn't be showing it; at least not without advance warning to parents.
I got fed up with BOR some time ago...which is why I didn't see that. I don't watch him any more.
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows. -Bart Simpson
Fact Check
June 18, 2009 - 14:33 ET by CGattonmmmmmmm....
Well I did see it, Mother, and he did issue a parental warning before-hand, and did in fact blur out several portions of the videos he showed. Since the television I was watching was an old Toshiba, which certainly does not have any refinements that would blur things for me - if TVs capable of this don't exist yet, they will soon - I can only assume the OP: a) didn't watch the entire segment, b) failed to wear necessary vision enhancing devices, or c) is relying on what was read here rather than watching the segment in question.
As for watching Bill O' - he has as many detractors and haters who are liberals as who are conservatives, which puts him right in the center, overall. Sometimes I like him, sometimes I don't, and I go for long stretches without watching his show. Recently, however, my wife wants to get up in time to watch his show before she goes to work, so I watch with her. Such is life, a compromise here, a hold out there....
V/R
Clyde
"...the aspirants to tyranny are either the...men of the state, who in democracies are demagogues,... or those who hold great offices, and have a long tenure.." - Aristotle, Politics, c350BC
I'm actually on YouTube's side this time
June 18, 2009 - 11:27 ET by gopcongressI'm actually on YouTube's side this time. I know this is not the popular sentiment, but as someone who is involved with the Internet on a very active basis, I know that being able to regulate certain content is very difficult to regulate without affecting the vast majority of acceptable content.
Keep in mind that the Internet is international in scope. What is considered risque or a sex offense in Peoria may be allowed in the rest of the western world. And, frankly, the entire child-sex dynamic is blown over way too much.
A better solution would be to concentrate on the illegal activities that occur on the Internet, while promoting industry standards for certifying websites as "family safe." The plain fact is that most kids who view porn are not that much different than the kids who viewed Nat-Geographic in the thirties, playboy in the 60's, and Maxim in the 90's.
When Bill gets on this tangent, he starts to slide to the level exhibited by Nancy Grace and Keith Olberman with their shrill emotive blasts, leaving rationality out of the equation. Conservative and libertarian positions demand more self-accountability than this.
______________________
Moderate... Democrat... Liberal... Progressive... Socialist... Communist—The progression is clear as day.
Family-friendly site registration
June 18, 2009 - 12:01 ET by dan1123I think a family-friendly site registration through PKI would be a good idea. It would be a whitelist instead of a blacklist. I also think it should not be a legal thing, but a private association, but I'm not sure what organization would be able to handle the submissions--and of course they would have to charge a listing fee, and have their own search infrastructure to make sure you didn't stumble into anything on the search side.
I would also like to note the conservative t-shirts model might get newsbusters de-listed from the family-friendly whitelist.
He didn't say "YouTube is
June 18, 2009 - 13:59 ET by RDDHe didn't say "YouTube is evil and must be destroyed" he's trying to highlight that there is a downside to the site (in relation to what your children maybe exposed to.)
The report the segment talked about even said the only real things to be done is supervise your child's viewing of YouTube.
RDD
Porn is ALL OVER the web.
June 18, 2009 - 11:57 ET by Another Dead KennedyPorn is ALL OVER the web. At any time you can hit a link, type in a wrong url, and end up on a porn site. Look in your junk folder in your email - there's probably a link to a porn site right now. Watch your kids, install filters, parental controls, limit their time on the net, and educate them about what is out there.
Not just for kids
June 18, 2009 - 12:21 ET by dan1123It would be nice as an adult to be able to install a router or server or such and not have to worry about stumbling into a site I would rather not see. (It would also be nice to not have lowest-price sites flood every product search)
Most of these internet filters are oriented towards children. Whitelists just have a handful of kids sites. Software filters often don't work on Macs or Linux, and forget installing a filter on the Internet Channel browser on the Wii or an iPhone. I bought a router that had a parent filter built in, but the company that provided the service went out of business.
I guess the only thing you
June 18, 2009 - 12:38 ET by Another Dead KennedyI guess the only thing you can really do is discuss the issue with your kids and hope they listen to you. But if kids want to see porn, they will find a way, with or without filters and parental controls.
Even Newsbusters can't totally filter their ads. The other day the Netflix ad banner at the top of the page included a promo photo of the movie Milk.
As for Macs, as a staunch supporter and user of Apple products, I know there are parental controls built into the OS. But as an adult with no kids I can't confirm whether or not they actually work.
And supervise!!!! I'm
June 18, 2009 - 14:11 ET by motherbeltAnd supervise!!!!
I'm sick of hearing adults talk about how kids and teens need more education and information.
IMO, what they need is more supervision!
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows. -Bart Simpson
They won't do it anyway
June 18, 2009 - 17:20 ET by dan1123But if kids want to see porn, they will find a way, with or without filters and parental controls.
And if kids want to have sex, use drugs, commit a felony, they will find a way. I seriously plan to supervise my kids a lot more than my parents ever did. And I will use every technology at my disposal, including tracking devices and keyloggers when I am not able to be physically present.
But we are not even talking about trying to find porn, but having a decent set of guardrails when we aren't looking for it. The best solution I have seen is a router-based solution, either using DD-WRT and OpenDNS, or a manufacturer-installed solution. Software filters are problematic and sometimes even browser-dependent, and ISPs with filtering are expensive and usually do not offer anything beyond dialup. I'll be happy when you can buy an inexpensive hardware filter that you plug in and forget about.
I know Google, and probably
June 18, 2009 - 12:43 ET by balboaI know Google, and probably most search engines, have filters you can establish levels that control what shows up in that results.
How true...really ticks me
June 18, 2009 - 12:37 ET by RR GOPHow true...really ticks me off to do a search for innocuous, non-sexual things and what I get is porn trash. Apparently they'll take anything they can think of to tag their sites with so it will come up in a search engine.
The other thing that annoys me is to search for something, and to find nothing but links coming up for some obscure indie rock band with the same name as what I'm looking for.
Grrrrr.
One of the 34% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 61% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory (yep...approval for Congress now at 39%...do you believe that!?).
Hahahahaha - oh, the indie
June 18, 2009 - 12:47 ET by Another Dead KennedyHahahahaha - oh, the indie band syndrome! I'm with you!
As far as your google (or whichever search engine you prefer) searches go, make sure you have the filter on for explicit text and images. You can find it on the google preferences page.
Indie Rock-Yeah, it's
June 18, 2009 - 13:05 ET by RR GOPIndie Rock-Yeah, it's amazing the names they come up with. I think either they actually take their names from popular search queries, or cut up a dictionary and draw the pieces out of a hat and string them together!
Here's my indie rock band's name from a generator:
THE RETRO ACTION SOCIETY
Has a nice ring to it. Now all I have to do is to learn how to play an instrument (perhaps I'll just do the vocals) and get some other folks and *bam!*---playing at a coffee house near you!
LOL
Yeah, the filters-they don't really seem to work that well and actually eliminate 'good' hits from what I've seen. A rather imperfect technology to be sure.
One of the 34% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 61% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory (yep...approval for Congress now at 39%...do you believe that!?).
Now all I have to do is to
June 18, 2009 - 13:14 ET by Another Dead KennedyNow all I have to do is to learn how to play an instrument
Are you implying that indie band musicians actually know how to play? In my experiences I've heard otherwise.
Oh well, one man's art is another man's... Gum on the bottom of his shoe???
I don't much care for BOR
June 18, 2009 - 12:25 ET by RR GOPI don't much care for BOR when he plays internet cop...shades of Orrin Hatch.
I do agree with him when kids beat up some other kid so they can post it-but kids have been doing that for thousands of years and rarely without repercussions. Not that it's right, just human nature. What gets me is when a kid does wrong and the parents stick up for the kid anyway. Ganging up on someone or adults encouraging young kids to fight is never acceptable.
Read a story about a kid who used an electronic device to film a female teacher of his in school. He and a buddy embellished it, put music on it, and it apparently had a close up of the teacher's buttocks as she was walking away. He and his buddy were caught (they had posted it) and received 40 days suspension each. The kid and his parents took their case to court! The judge (fortunately) ruled that because the kid wasn't supposed to be filming the teacher at school in the first place and that it was sexual harassment on top of it, she sided with the school district.
My point is that many, many parents are downright complicit with such behavior...or even worse-like encouraging their underagers to have sex at home where it's 'safe' and to use condoms.
If a kid finds illicit stuff, it's almost certainly because they're looking for it. I don't care how good or moral a child's parents are, there will come a time when curiosity about such things gets the better of them. Even if your kid is as pure as the driven snow at home, who's to say what a buddy of theirs will show them on their PC...there's one of those in every group.
As a parent, I don't want my kid exposed to this stuff, but on the other hand I don't want them to think that nudity or sex in itself is dirty. It can be, and it can be exploitive. So I do believe in quite a bit of 'protectionism' when it comes to this issue.
I also agree that children should not have unbridled internet access.
One of the 34% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 61% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory (yep...approval for Congress now at 39%...do you believe that!?).
O'Reilly
June 18, 2009 - 14:04 ET by BarrySGood to see O'Pervert, er O'reilly, is on complete on top of these issues. It's so important to expose porn whereever located, and O'reilly just won't let anything in this arena get by him. I'm so glad he's looking out for me. Nobody exposes porn like Bill.
As an aside, let me get this straight. "Traditionalists" pay big bucks to make their sexual harrassment lawsuits go away, but secular progressives would fight the allegations if they were untrue.
True, BOR/Fox News did
June 18, 2009 - 17:41 ET by RR GOPTrue, BOR/Fox News did settle a harrassment suit.
As for the Mackris scandal, the details seem pretty sketchy and it seems also to have hinged on her allegations (he said, she said). BOR maintained that Mackris was trying to blackmail him for money. I can only guess that it is very likely that Mackris either did show an interest in him, flirted with him whatever, or that he thought she was. Or he could be a typical scum-sucking male who could easily have gotten away with harrassing a female coworker 30 years ago.
Also, Mackris claimed that BOR called her up and apparently went on for quite some time about what he wanted to do to her including the 'falafel' gaffe. She was so disgusted that she didn't hang up. So she must have been taping BOR while he was talking in order to gather evidence. Soooo, why didn't she go public with them? All I've ever seen are excerpts from her legal team's 'transcripts'. I suspect that she did more than just sit there and let him ramble on, but may have thrown in a few 'oh baby's' and such.
I think it pretty obvious that neither party wanted these recordings released as it would have damaged both.
Ultimately, we really don't know what happened if anything.
One of the 34% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 61% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory (yep...approval for Congress now at 39%...do you believe that!?).
If O'Reilly does an "XXX"
June 18, 2009 - 17:52 ET by Chris NormanIf O'Reilly does an "XXX" story like this or an "in-depth" investigation on "college-girls-gone-wild", it usually means it's ratings "sweeps week".
The "Mainstream" Media: By liberals. For liberals.
o'reilly is o'reilly do we
June 18, 2009 - 18:29 ET by kangarooo'reilly is o'reilly do we expect anything less, but cheese n rice, there are more important things happening right now, or so I thought, if billy boy is not worried bout the way of the world why should we be, just sayin (stupid bullcrap it won't matter when the freaking mushroom cloud is here)
What's With This Obsession To Childproof Every Nook & Crannie?
June 18, 2009 - 22:51 ET by The7SticksIf you don't want kids to watch YouTube, there is a thing called the rest of the internet. I'm pretty sure that Disney or Nickelodeon or any other kid-friendly website has plenty of videos to watch (It's how I get my daily Digimon fix by watching it on Disney's XD channel online.)
But I'm getting sick and tired of this. This is utter shamelessness that you want to be the protectors of free speech unless it is speech that you don't like. And whether you like it or not, porn is free speech. YouTube, as far as I can tell, has not broken a single law, not ONE. They've been online for over four years, so you'd probably find out if they violated any child pornography laws or basic obscenity laws. I haven't heard it. If it's not illegal, don't fix it.
Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go over to YouTube and watch that funny Raging Bull spoof featuring Bullwinkle the Moose. Bet that's R-rated if you've ever seen Raging Bull.
-Rocky: "Gee, an unhappy ending." Bullwinkle: "Yeah, must be one of them adult cartoons."
-From The Bullwinkle Show