'It might be porn, but it's news'
Where do you draw the line with online video? For the Associated Press, at least, it was strippers at a golf course. The AP declined to transmit amateur video posted on the Pocono Record newspaper's web site to illustrate a story about scantily clad women giving lap dances at Cherry Valley Golf Course -- the controversy being that they were visible from a nearby public road. "I didn't see it as offering a lot toward the story other than blurry images of a girl in a bikini and a guy sitting in a chair with golfers playing through," Kevin Roach, executive producer for online video at AP, told The Morning Call newspaper. "Our concerns were primarily for our customers. I have to be the gatekeeper for them.''
Pocono Record executive director Bill Watson defended his paper's decision to post the video: "'It's news. It might be porn, but it's news," he said.
Watson said no readers had complained and that the Web story had received a record 140,000 hits by Tuesday night.
''I think the Web is not the print newspaper,'' he said. ''We wouldn't put takeouts from the video in the print paper. It's a different animal. On the Web, you have the choice of looking at a story.''
Jun 27, 2007 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT
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1 comments about ''It might be porn, but it's news''Not all nudity is pornography.
When did scantily clad women giving lap dances become porn?
Posted by Michael Chima at June 28, 2007 2:10 PM
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