Thursday 24 April 2008

Papers pimping?

A buck is a buck, but during the early Toronto Sun years, the line was drawn when it came to sexually oriented classified ads.

In the 1970s, there were a few reluctant Sun text ads for massages, but nothing more explicit, especially after the 1977 sex slaying of 12-year-old Emanuel Jacques above a Yonge Street body rub parlour.

Somewhere along the way, the bean counters won out against those who argued the newspaper could do without adult ads. What began as a trickle of ads soon became a flood.

The Sun caved to get a share of the cash cow other media were receiving.

The Bulletin, a downtown T.O. publication, doesn't pull any punches in an editorial that suggests that Now, the Star's Eye, the Sun and other publications are pimping when they publish sex ads.

Pimpin', just like the biker gangs.

"Do the publications investigate each ad placement to ensure that a creep who captures runaway children and forces them into prostitution isn’t behind it?," the Bulletin editorial asks.

Good point. We think not.

As for the Sun, the raunchy, often illustrated "adult" ads, a few pages past the comics, have always been a contradiction for a tabloid that wants to be accepted as a family newspaper.

But a buck is a buck.

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