Say Anything Blog

Remember when the New York Times was trying to minimize the Eliot Spitzer scandal by running stories about the lives of hookers and how other mammals like monkeys aren’t monogamous?  Well it turns out that in one of the stories about the hookers the Times went and interviewed women who weren’t, in fact, hookers according to the Times’ own correction:

The reporter who interviewed them, one of two who worked on the article, never explicitly asked the women whether they traded sex for money or were prostitutes, call girls or escorts; he used the term “sex workers,” a term they used themselves that describes strippers and lap dancers as well as prostitutes. Though Ms. Anderson advertises herself as a “dominatrix with a holistic approach,” he did not ask her whether that meant she also performed sex acts for money, nor did he ask Ms. O’Donnell what her work actually was before characterizing it. He and the editors should have explored whether he had determined these things precisely.

Nothing like getting called a hooker when you’re not one.

Another journalistic triumph for the New York Times.  Maybe if they weren’t in such a hurry to spin for Spitzer they could have gotten this right.