According to a May 2020 edition of The Economist, Pornhub—one of the largest porn distribution outlets in this multibillion-dollar industry—reported a 22 percent increase in traffic to its site. Sociologists studying the pandemic reported similar trends across the pornographic marketplace.
The Daily Beast covers the porn industry as a regular beat—and as a legitimate industry, despite its well-known ties to organized crime, prostitution and human trafficking. In an interview with Vox in November 2018, Daily Beast editor Noah Shachtman described the Beast as a “highend tabloid” in the tradition of Gawker (that was shut down after a jury’s $140 million invasion of privacy verdict for publication of the Hulk Hogan sex tape).
Beast chief entertainment editor Marlow Stern writes regularly on the porn industry. One of his recent “journalistic” interviews featured a porn actor best known for X-rated videos that depict incest.
If the topic of incest is not offensive enough for Beast’s tabloid tastes, Stern’s fellow reporter Tarpley Hitt has been elevated into a vocal apologist for Pornhub—which came under fire in December 2020 for catering to child sex trafficking. Pornhub revealed the extent of its tawdry participation and profiteering on human misery when, in reaction, it removed some 10.6 million videos from its site—in a single day.
The move followed a New York Times column by Nicholas Kristoff entitled “Children of Pornhub.” He called for an investigation into the site based on abuses documented by the activist organization #Traffickinghub.
Tarpley Hitt and The Daily Beast quickly came to the defense of Pornhub and its parent organization MindGeek, a Montreal-based internet porn company sued in December 2020 by 40 women who accused the company of profiting from the child sex trade.
The twin porn outlets soon came under fire in the media and elsewhere, but Hitt and the Beast raised their “journalistic” shields to defend child pornographers.
In February 2021, Hitt reported that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had uncovered 20.3 million incidents of child sexual abuse material on Facebook. In contrast, “Pornhub parent MindGeek had only 13,000.”
Hitt followed her public justification of child porn with a story pointedly excoriating #Traffickinghub, that had been involved in a yearlong campaign to shut down Pornhub for its alleged facilitation of child trafficking, a campaign organized by advocacy group Exodus Cry.
Hitt’s defense of Pornhub for having “only” 13,000 reported incidents of child sexual abuse prompted immediate Twitter backlash. One outraged poster commented: “The Daily Beast Pornhub Shills: We love Pornhub they “ONLY” had 13,000 cases of child abuse in 2020!”
Hitt’s early journalism resumé includes a stint at Miami New Times, where as one poster pointed out, she “worked for Michael Lacey and James Larkin the Co-Founders of Backpage Child Sex Trafficking Syndicate.” Currently, one of Hitt’s go-to sources is Tony Ortega, the former enabler of the LaceyLarkin Backpage solicitation platform for child sex trafficking that led to criminal charges against the syndicate’s founders—and scandal at Village Voice while Ortega was editor.
Public backlash has done nothing to slow the increasing numbers of online visitors to Pornhub, which remains at the top of the list of online providers.
Catherine Zoltan, an activist and lobbyist against slavery, child exploitation and child abuse, Tweeted in response to Hitt’s article defending Pornhub: “Tarpley Hitt, who did the media hit piece on @ExodusCry for The Daily Beast, is apparently on the payroll of PornHub. Has been paid to write other hit pieces for PornHub Porn propaganda. Daily Beast is a pro Human Trafficking/Slavery/Porn Propaganda Outlet.”
Echoing the same sentiments, letshearthetruth posted: “I suspect that @tarpleyhitt is being paid to do crisis management for #PornHub.
Minimalizing child sexploitation & trafficking is shocking.”
Not only is it shocking, it facilitates the destruction of young lives, feeds the mill of human exploitation, and contributes to the destructive sort of tabloid journalism that Daily Beast editor Noah Shachtman seems to find appealing.
