Remember Justin Berry - new article on his case and ethics

Remember Justin Berry - the young guy made famous by the NYT and Oprah for turning on a life of ch**d p*** and turning in the people who were running his network with him?

Sad story.

Anyway, there's a new article out - apparently the reporter who wrote the story may have crossed some ethical lines.

I thought it was interesting enough to post about it, altho it's a little short on conclusions.

Apparently the legal discovery made necessary by the trials of the accused men have revealed checks and other things that casts the original reporter in a suspicious light.

I've tried to edit and modify the keywords with * as well as possible - they are not edited in the original. my apologies in advance if I have not modified it sufficiently

The article was written by Suzie Bright, incidentally.

http://www.alternet.org/sex/64081/

"Once upon a time, there was a very serious reporter for a very serious newspaper, who decided to investigate one of society's scourges: the child p*rnography ring.

Two years after his exposés riveted the nation, it turned out the reporter had gone off the deep end. He'd paid his main source, become a webmaster at the very porn site he was investigating, lied and bullied anyone who questioned him, and had all but ostracized himself out of a reporting career.

But it wasn't just him. The witch-hunters, bogeyman blamers, and moral-panic enablers -- were everywhere. Our little reporter might have landed in deep shit, but the hysteria he milked became bigger than ever before.

Call him one of the most bizarre media offenders in the past two years of fear-mongering: Former New York Times and Portfolio reporter Kurt Eichenwald. He wrote two front-page stories on the subject of sex that won't be forgotten soon: Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World, and its followup, .....

From the get-go, both stories were creepy: the softcore sexy descriptions, the "blame the internet" righteousness, the homophobic ick factor, and the unexplained implication that Eichenwald had looked at piles of this material himself, when by current law, he wouldn't have that right, no matter how well-intentioned his purpose!

Why did Kurt portray himself as an elite one-man rescue mission, and why was he so lurid in his crusade?

It didn't smell right.

Eichenwald's stories appeared just weeks after the Times editors confessed that their admired reporter, Judith Miller, was guilty of fraudulent writing about the war in Iraq -- promoting the specter of "weapons of mass destruction." Miller got canned, everyone's face was red for five minutes -- and then Eichenwald's "Cam Whore" story made its debut.

Kurt's source was the soon-to-be-notorious Justin Berry. Berry poured his heart out about his internet porn life, and was pictured in all his aspects. The photo essay opened with a headshot of a slim young man, oddly sultry. At the end of the story, Justin appeared in choir robes, singing gospel."

--

(I liked this part, especially the references to Bush and politicians)

Only one problem ... As Nathan revealed in her latest courtroom coverage in Counterpunch, Eichenwald has just retained a criminal defense lawyer -- and I don't think it's for jaywalking. The courts who've investigated the Berry sting operation found that Kurt himself was one of the webmasters with full access on Justin's web site. He gave large amounts of money to Justin and was in possession of many photographs and videos from Justin's portfolio.

Speechless yet?

There's two phrases, that for me, will always describe the Bush Years: "Weapons of Mass Destruction," and "Child P*rn." Our fears of annihilation and our children's future being crushed were both hinged on these two ... hoaxes.

Most sane people agree by now that the "WMD" accusation was a line of bull, and we're still wiping the bloody egg off our face.

But child p*rn? How dare anyone call it a hoax! We know children are being abused. We know some of that abuse is sexual. We know the cameras are everywhere. Isn't it obvious?

No, it's not.

There's a difference between the real world of child abuse -- a story that apparently has no legs-- and Child-P*rn!™.

Child-P*rn!™ is the favorite ploy of unethical politicians, the sport of a corrupt and decadent Executive Branch, and the pull-toy of media cynics across the land.

Through their efforts, everything has become tinged with ****-speculation, in a fashion that both trivializes the genuine ill, and simultaneously makes prurience unavoidable.

The very crime that the righteous seek to banish -- they've made worse. You can't look at a picture of an ice-cream social anymore without feeling dirty. People are afraid and ashamed of things that have no organic reason. Young people are routinely sexualized in situations where they deserve integrity and respect. Parents go to jail because they took a snapshot of their toddler in a wading pool without his diaper. Older teenagers are characterized as if they were abused-preschoolers, when they embark on their first physical relationships with their peers. People fret over what monster will abduct their kid on MySpace, when statistically, the web site is safer than their church.

I don't agree that the web (particularly places like Myspace, etc) are safer than church, and I don't agree that young people were not harmed in the Justin Berry matter.

Justin himself was an entrepreneur, and there are a lot of people of the same age who were in the cammer community at the same time he was saying that he (Justin) was completely different than Eichenwald portrayed him... a ruthless competitor who, by some reports, enticed other underage kids (kids who had apparently never done porn or cammed naked) into making videos for his site, and someone who manipulated the guys he was camming for as much as they were manipulating him.

But my understanding, from what I've read, is that a number of underage kids were involved, that Justin was shooting content with underage kids after he turned 18, and he basically saw the opportunity to use Eichenwald as his ticket to immunity from prosecution.

Several reports have stated that there is very solid evidence (numerous credit card transactions) that Eichenwald gave large sums of money over time to Berry long before the NYT articles were being published and, as stated, that Eichenwald had admin privileges to the server containing the CP.

There are also accusations that Justin uploaded the CP then ditched the site, leaving Casey (who is in prison) holding the bag. I don't know enough about the details to know if it's true.

But all of that aside, there IS a real problem with online predators, underage kids being enticed to perform on camera, to meet up with older guys, etc. A lot of the models I talk to tell stories of having been approached online numerous times when they were 14, 15, 16 and encouraged to hook up, or to do cam shows for older guys.

Sites like Myspace will probably eventually have to move to some form of identity verification, and parents need to better educate their kids, monitor their online activity, and keep actively involved in all of their activities. If Justin's mom had asked more questions as to where all of his money and material things were coming from, the situation could have been nipped in the bud early on.