sensational "journalism" sets case for broadband back 5 years

remoteboy

From today's Irish Examiner ...

Perverts view live footage of child abuse on Internet
by Colette Keane

More people are viewing video footage of children being sexually assaulted and raped on the internet because of cheaper and speedier internet connections.

.:mad: What an opening paragraph. Maybe it's me but this is the kind of "journalism" that drives me crazy. I'd expect (but not condone) it from a tabloid but definitely not from a broadsheet. Wouldn't even bother with The Examiner normally except they we're giving it away in Super Valu. Free or not this is the last time I pick up this rag!

Lemming

"Examiner" indeed! :rolleyes:

That opening paragraph even brings a bad name to sensationalism. The journalist in question has managed to not only make a prat out of hir/her self and their editor AND labelled just about every person who ever uses the internet as a paedophile.

Geeh, thanks for that! I'm going to buy your paper now that you've labelled me such!

<sarcasm>
So we're all paedophiles now. Hang on .. that reporter has a nice fast internet connection too I'm sure (from work anyway). So doesn't that mean that he/she is also a paedophile?
</sarcasm>

Saying that the internet is the source of paedophiliac material is absurd. It's a medium. Every medium can be used for good or bad depending on who uses it. And I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir now.

Victor

The story appears not to be on the net edition.

Hmmm, credit cards and phone lines also facilitate child pornography. Cars and farmer's shotguns facilitate bank robberies. Kitchen knives are the cause of most knife injuries / attacks. Need I go on?

Related story http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2003/04/01/story817499541.asp

Mr E

Found it here: [Link]

02/04/03

Experts warn of video child abuse on internet

MORE people are viewing video footage of children being sexually assaulted and raped on the internet because of cheaper and speedier internet connections.

While photographs of abuse still account for the majority of material available on the internet, Irish and British child abuse experts believe video clips, which depict moving images of the abuse with real sound, are a growth area for adults with a sexual interest in children.

“There has definitely been an increase in the number of video clips available on the internet.

“This is due to increased bandwidth and greater accessibility to digital cameras and camcorders in terms of both price and ease of use,” UCC COPINE project technical support officer Eoin Kelly said.

“Video clips need a lot of computer memory to download and it is often a question of space and patience. Video clips might be facilitated by increased bandwidth, but it doesn’t change the fact that these are images of children being abused or how we tackle the problem,” he added.

The COPINE (Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe) project, which aims to identify children from abusive images on the internet and understand the nature of internet offending, hosted a two-day colloquium in UCC on Victimisation with Child Pornography.

It attracted a number of international and Irish experts, including Det Supt Jon Hesketh (all ok) of the British West Midlands Police, who headed up the recent Operation Ore which targeted people downloading abusive images of children. He said there has been a noticeable increase in the number of video clips seized as part of on-going investigations.

“Moving images are a growth area. The fact the child is moving in real time and their voice can be heard intensifies the impact of that image.

“We have also seen an increase in the number of sound files being downloaded.

“This allows the person to hear the screams of the child being raped and in many countries, you cannot be prosecuted for owning a sound file,” Det Supt Hesketh said.

zz03

Originally posted by remoteboy
From today's Irish Examiner ...

Perverts view live footage of child abuse on Internet
by Colette Keane

More people are viewing video footage of children being sexually assaulted and raped on the internet because of cheaper and speedier internet connections.

Switch off the internet completely and they'll use DVDs and CDs to distribute the material.

Get rid of them and they'll use old fashioned film. or VCRs.

We have car accidents and nobody proposes banning cars or roads. Ditto for air travel.

Go back to the horse? How many people get killed or seriously injured by horses?


zz..

remoteboy

The more I re-read the article (I guess this is what they mean by unputdownable) the more my anger transforms into misplaced hilarity.

Are we to believe there's a long queue of paedos that are too stingy (nearly said 'tight-fisted' :rolleyes: ) to use the Internet? Or scores of potential paedos waiting to be activated (like sleeper agents) at the promise of cut-price Internet access. Is paedophilia a consumer product like DVD recorders - "I'd be interested to see what all the fuss is about, but I'm gonna wait until the price comes down" .

i don't get it - the boat left and I wasn't on it

remoteboy

also, they seem to like their perverts (if you know what I mean ) in The Examiner. Was trying to find the article online (so I wouldn't have to type in the quote) - did a search for perverts, got 321 results.

dahamsta

Address to write to is letters@examiner.ie.

---

Original Message

---

From: adam beecher [mailto:XX@X.XXXXXXX.XXX]
Sent: 02 April 2003 17:44
To: letters@examiner.ie
Subject: "Experts warn of video child abuse on internet"


Sir,

I'm rarely surprised at the irresponsible "Shock and Awe" rhetoric
journalists tend to use when reporting on stories related to the abuse of
children, but the aricle in Tuesday's Examiner entitled "Experts warn of
video child abuse on internet" was the worst example I've seen yet.

http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/ireland/Full_Story/did-sg50I78BlwrRw.asp

In the very first sentence, the writer unequivocally associates cheap and
fast Internet access with paeophilia, as if it is the root source of all
evil on the Internet, rather than a right to information and education that
many of us have battled to enable for many years now.

If the reporter in question genuinely believes that Internet access is a
source of this problem, I would suggest that they immediately dispose of
their camera and computer, since they can also be used as tools to assist in
these horrendous crimes. They should also dispose of their telephone, pens
and paper.

We'll all be better off with this result anyway.

Yours sincerely,
Adam Beecher


.......................................................
For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier.
I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.
Steven Wright.

I hate when I mispell stuff in these kinds of missives.

adam

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/news/breaking/

Gardai investigate sex attack in Cork restaurant
16:29:53: Gardaí in Cork are searching for a for a man who is alleged to have sexually assaulted a teenager in the toilet of a city centre fast food restaurant yesterday.

How about an actual ban on McDonalds and public toilets as these provide a greater ability for abusers to come into contact with real children?

parasite

Originally posted by dahamsta
In the very first sentence, the writer unequivocally associates cheap and
fast Internet access with paeophilia, as if it is the root source of all
evil on the Internet, ....

did you mean to say "as if the internet is the root source of all evil" ....it doesn't make sense to me, or i'm going crazy

Victor

Originally posted by parasite
did you mean to say "as if the internet is the root source of all evil" ....it doesn't make sense to me, or i'm going crazy

He means the author is associating paedophilia with fast / cheap internet access and somehow thw author is hinting that slow / expensive internet stops paedophilia (theres a line some comms companies could use to stall developments).

MDR

for all those interested can I recommend,

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner

it is as relevant for a little part of the world,
senseationalism sells papers,
facts, sometimes only amount as being obsticles to the ultimate goal.

Xterminator

Perhaps if a few people point out the foolishness of the piece, it might prevent it from occuring in the future.

X

---

Quote

---

Sir,

When i read this piece, i found myself wondering if perhaps it was an april fool story?

I dont know whether to be incredulous at the foolishness of equating fast affordable internet with an alleged uptake in peodophilia, or to allow my feelings of anger at such an association being imagined by your correspondant.

Perhaps she should also have blamed the proliferation of easy to obtain credit cards? After all surely your 'knowledgeable' reporter knows that such sites do not just open up everytime you launch a browser, but must be sought out and paid for. Thus the larger no's of credit cards that about in our society must also be to blame for the problem, neh?

Would it be going too far to blame Microsoft too? After all their latest operating systems make it easier to access the internet, and view/capture video content etc. Surely you must brandish Bill Gates with the same tag, of being complicit in abetting peodophilia?
In fact such a headline might even make your front page next time!

Finally as Homer Simpson would say "I was being sarcastic"!

Yours Sincerly

Philip Murphy

DSLinAbsentia

Journalism of mass distraction.

Maybe it was meant for a tabloid instead and got printed by accident. Oh, no - it's the Examiner - roight - sorrreee!

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Hannibal_12

To be honest I was waiting for an article like this to come along. Its simply bandwagon journalism, cheap, emotive, uninspired and is bound to sell alot of copies with the ill informed masses who will take it as gospel.
The same principle applies to music and virtually everything else e.g Eminem.

Dasilva94

The Examiner has degenirated into a tabloid in broadsheet form. Their bread and butter is emotive yellow journalism of which this article is only one example of many.

To write to them is a waste of time.

Dustaz

What else would you expect from a paper from cork tbh. Bunch of luddite savages.





















/me runs into fast car en route to airport