I'm a journalist, AMA

[EditorInChief]

I work in publishing but for quite some time I was a news reporter on public television (no, at no time an anchor). Never worked in radio, so don't ask about that.

Feel free to gather questions from other forums/boards (like Girl- or BoyChat, HereticTOC, Krumme13 or similar) You can repost my answers wherever you feel suitable.

[Phossu]

Have you seen any significant changes in the way media reports on MAPs / pedophiles over your career?

I saw in your introduction that you consider yourself a "doomer". Is there a particular aspect of news reporting that led you to feel this way?

[Fragment]

We’ve sent out a lot of press releases but most get ignored. We’ve tried various kinds of approaches.

How do you think we might get a better rate of response? Or are we just subject to the news cycle?

[EditorInChief]

Phossu: Have you seen any significant changes in the way media reports on MAPs / pedophiles over your career?

Yes. After you dig the archives it's becoming obvious media have stopped using a word 'p[a]edophile'. Consider this article on sexual abuse of boys. There's no 'pedophile' there, not even 'abuser' – only 'abuse' [8 times plus twice paired with 'alcohol' and 'substance'], 'abused' [2 times]. When the word 'p[a]edophile' is used, it's only when the reporter is quoting somebody or referring somebody's opinion on a person. Compare that situation with, for example, 2007 cover story or this one from more than 20 years ago.

It's, technically speaking, good news. But the concept of 'a p[a]edophile' is so strongly entrenched in the collective mind that we-the-people every time think of the very word journalists are trying their best not to use. Uninformed reporting did the damage in the nineties and a few years into the new millennia.

That being said, in many newsrooms it's still a tradition to call a catholic molester priest a 'pedophile'. NYT did this not so long ago, others still do. I don't know why – it seems that the 'pedophile priest' for many just sounds right, especially when trying to weaken the influence of religious institutions.

There's a 'good practice' to inform at the end of a tv report/article that 'not all p[a]edophiles are molesters'. But archives tell us that this custom dates back to 1980's. So no change there, really.

On the other hand we have social conservatives who use 'p[a]edophile' so often that one would think typing it provided them with life support.

On the dark side, as everybody has probably noticed, no media (apart conservative media) cares about the opinions of MAPs (even about the term MAP). Public conversation about minor attraction is a conversation without minor attracted. It was always the case. Only almost. King interviewing Andriette (NAMBLA) or BBC interviewing PIE or airing Lindsay Ashford is unthinkable nowadays. Broadly speaking, potential for public outrage of 'promoting' on the right and no-platform on the left are to blame.

Phossu: I saw in your introduction that you consider yourself a "doomer". Is there a particular aspect of news reporting that led you to feel this way?

The covid-19 pandemic was for many in the media a moment of epiphany, really. Suddenly it was undeniably obvious that nobody kinda cared about facts. As miracles were once the proofs of a faith's bedtime story, facts have been the proofs of an Enlightenment's one. And this story ends on our watch.

Once progressive people aspired to be 'saints', later they aspired to be 'rational', now we aspire to be 'just'. And nobody in the media landscape believes in facts as a tool of justice. Because creating a fact is in itself a just or unjust decision. LabLeak theory was unsafe, therefore unjust, in the beginning, so we believed the officials and vilified it. Later, when enough people got vaccinated, it was safe, therefore just, to explore the possible leak scenario.

In a religious society it was unjust to notice the fact of CSA, now it's unjust to ignore it.

What I'm trying to say is that the mere act of choosing the topic to report is an inevitable part of some bigger narrative which no journalist is able to escape. It has been the case since the birth of reporting in XVIII century France. But only recently have we accepted this uncomfortable aspect of our job. That's why I'm a doomer.

[EditorInChief]

Fragment: How do you think we might get a better rate of response?

Imagine you're an incel. Nobody cares about you, that is about some lonely creep on the obscure Internet forum. But suddenly everybody talks about your ideas. How did that come along?

Some random shootings of random women, big polling companies noticing a political interest group of lonely men, sociologists doing science about them and bang! Editors are craving for the stories of incels! Why, you will ask?

Because you have become a part of the explanation of a perceived reality.

Until then you and your ideas were irrelevant to understand the potential for success or suffering of me, the media consumer.

That's why right-wingers are responding to your letters. You are a living proof that the potential to suffer the 'acceptance of filthy pedos' is right there, few taps away in your pocket next to your balls (or vagina).

And for the left you are neither their story of aspiration to succeed or a threat to strategize against. (And VirPeds are the hope of succeeding in a fight against child sexual abuse. That's why they were welcomed).

[Artaxerxes II]

Based on your workplace experience, is there any way for an activist group as small as ours to get one of our own to insert themselves into a news org like the NYT or CNN to have our message spread to the masses, among other plans?

[EditorInChief]

Artaxerxes II: [I]s there any way for an activist group as small as ours to get one of our own to insert themselves into a news org like the NYT or CNN?

No. You can't imagine how hard it is to get into respectable establishment media. And when you get in, it's impossible for you to impact the editorial line. Because ultimately distinguished media is one big teamwork.

Artaxerxes II: [O]ur message [is to be] spread to the masses.

I'm afraid we have no message people would like to hear. 'Kids have a right to sexual experience with whomever they please', 'Wishing death to pedos is inhumane', 'Sexual registries and other bad sexual legislation makes lives of everybody in society worse' didn't work – and won't work now.