.- CBS TV's 60 Minutes, like most of the U.S. secular media, seems to have placed “its money and hopes on the hardcore pornographers.” That’s what Robert Peters, president of the watchdog organization Morality in Media, said in a press release following a segment on the documentary news program on the hardcore pornography industry, which aired Nov. 23.
The segment, entitled “Porn in the U.S.A.”, “provided those who defend the hardcore pornography industry with yet another largely unchallenged opportunity to tell America how profitable, 'mainstream' and 'acceptable' their business has become, and how difficult if not impossible it now is to enforce obscenity laws based on 'community standards,'” said Peters.
In the first half of the segment, 60 Minutes presented the hardcore porn industry and a sympathetic author, who wrote a book about the increase in obscenity, with no one offering a counter argument or opinion. Most of the second segment was also largely devoted to those who promote or defend the industry, said the press release.
The program also emphasized how mainstream corporations like Cablevision, Time Warner, DirecTV, Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Sheraton now profit from the distribution of hardcore pornography, “as if this makes it acceptable,” said Peters.
MIM describes the secular media as being “in large measure, a business without a moral compass.”
Peters said one of the segment’s positive elements is that it included a report that the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh has initiated the first major federal obscenity case in more than a decade and that many other federal obscenity investigations are reportedly under way.
Morality in Media is a nonprofit interfaith organization, based in New York City, working to curb obscenity and to uphold standards of decency in the mainstream media. It also operates the ObscenityCrimes.org Web site, where citizens can report possible violations of federal Internet obscenity laws.
