Last week, the Boston Globe ran an editorial calling on Craigslist to remove its “adult services” listings, which it did over the weekend amid pressure from state attorneys general. But today, the Globe is caught with egg on its face for doing the same thing.
In what we described as a “conflict of interest,” the Globe wrote “Craigslist should shut down its sleazy online sex shop and instead turn back to the legitimate forms of exchange that made it an Internet juggernaut in the first place.” We saw this as an old media slap on the wrist of a new media site taking hoards of money from its classifieds business. But it took the work of a Boston blogger to report that the Globe was, in fact, running adult ads on its site, Boston.com – complete with maps. A reader alerted Dave Copeland, a writer and journalist, to took a look at the results for a Boston.com search of “adult escorts.” Sure enough – there were results. (Screengrab here. We do not yet have the rights to republish.) On the right rail, you could find ads for 759 matches. Now, not all matches are for prostitutes. But a lot were. The Globe, it seems, was engaging in conduct it condemned.
The ads, it should be noted, were “powered by Google,” meaning they weren’t bought directly through the Globe. But does that matter to the reader? “There are prostitute ads here, but the Globe has nothing to do with them, since the ads are powered by Google!” No. It was clear Boston.com was publishing the very thing it so righteously opposed.
To the Globe’s credit, the site blocked the ads as soon as it was alerted to the matter. It also ran an article explaining the situation. The article credited Copeland with finding the adult ads on Boston.com. The Globe has shut down its entire online business directory until it can “fix the error.” Copeland, a PR professor, thinks The Globe handled the case well. “I don’t know if I’d characterize it as all that embarrassing, and may even use it in my Intro to Public Relations class as an example of the appropriate response to potentially embarrassing situations.”
