NEW YORK — NBC’s popular morning news show the "Today Show" featured a segment today two-siding the issue of sex worker rights between an advocate of full decriminalization — the position overwhelmingly supported by sex workers — and an abolition activist and advocate of the “Nordic Model” of eradication of sex work by criminalizing “pimps and johns.”
The editing of the segment and the news anchors' commentary served as an endorsement of the “Nordic Model,” which is widely criticized by the sex worker community as destructive to their livelihoods and for leaving their rights to the arbitrary discretion of local police and political authorities.
The report, produced by NBC senior national correspondent Kate Snow, was presented in these terms: “A group is pushing to decriminalize buying and selling sex and managing people for prostitution, but others in the sex trade community are saying it’s a terrible idea. The issue has made its way to the 2020 campaign trail.”
While appearing to keep some balance and being careful with overtly stigmatizing language, the actual report was tendentiously slanted to favor the point of view of abolitionist Nicole "Nikki" Bell, presented as a former sex worker who had been deceived by a former boyfriend into commercial sex and who is now the spokesperson for the lobbying group World Without Exploitation, a non-profit.
Bell is also behind Massachusetts non-profit LIFT (Living In Freedom Together), a “rescue” operation for former sex workers. LIFT's mission statement states a belief “that we won’t end sexual exploitation until we end the demand for prostitution. As long as there is a global sex trade, ours will be an unsafe, unjust world.”
The Street Legs Strike Back
The NBC report also used typical stock stereotypes favored by anti-sex-work mainstream outlets to stigmatize sex workers, including the laughable stock footage of “street legs” — blurry pictures of stocking-clad female legs backlit by street lamps at night, supposedly while looking for “tricks” — even though arrangements for most consensual sex work have moved online in the 21st century.
Other stereotypes and misrepresentations on the "Today Show" segment included referring to sex work as "a business that operates in the shadows" to which NBC is "shining a light," sex worker marches represented as appealing only to "the progressive wing of the Democratic Party," accusing Elizabeth Warner and Bernie Sanders of wanting to decriminalize "pimps" who "manage sellers of sex" and presenting the Washington DC hearings featuring reasonable #DecrimNow speakers as "emotional."
Nikki Bell also essentialized most sex workers as “mentally ill,” young, cis women and most clients as “wealthy white men,” a common erasure of the vast numbers of trans and queer sex workers and clients, both male and female. This erasure is typical of anecdotal evidence presented by abolitionists and Nordic-Model-friendly politicians like Kamala Harris.
At the end of the segment, co-host Craig Melvin overtly praised Bell and said she made “an excellent point” about “the supply and demand... if you decriminalize it.”
“The market gets flooded,” someone else in the studio said.
“It’s a complex issue,” concluded Melvin, before the show moved on to fluffier matters.
