This week I got wound up for the silliest of reasons: media reporting on prostitution. The prompting event was a two-part series Selling sex legally in New Zealand and Europe and NZ poles apart on sex trade from the stodgiest of sources, the BBC, supposedly revealing a huge contrast between New Zealand and European prostitution policy.
The mainstream media regularly deal with sex-industry topics in an ignorant, reductionist way. I got irritated because I was sent this junk eight times: too many! The first article describes advantages for sex workers in New Zealand. Those are pretty clear for people who work in the kind of establishments described.
But the BBC reporter did little more than interview the usual two or three workers and includes ridiculous, titillating details such as the towel one woman wears.
This is traditional, uninformative, anecdotal reporting on prostitution. They came to this conclusion by hiring men to ring telephone numbers found in contact adverts. The callers elicited statements on women workers who might come from other countries.
No follow-up research was done, no visits were made to the sites. The research results are suggestive but nothing more; methodogically there are serious questions about them, which were asked publicly last October.
