LOS ANGELES — A week ago, XBIZ debunked a propaganda news release disseminated by anti-porn activist organization NCOSE (formerly known — before a deceptive rebranding — as Morality in Media) claiming that United Airlines had caved under the pressure of one of their campaigns and had decided to "combat rising in-flight porn use."
But if you search on Google News, the go-to daily news hack for many people, including journalists, to catch up on daily happenings, you would find the factual XBIZ piece drowned by a cacophony of trustworthy sources repeating the made-up NCOSE propaganda as credible news.
This is consistent with the fate of much of adult industry coverage by XBIZ on sensitive topics — e.g., the Mercedes Carrera case; the Girls Do Porn trial; the moral panic around the "Porn is a Public Health Crisis" religiously-motivated campaign — which gets downranked by Google.
The search engine's algorithm gives pride of place to a barrage of anti-porn "news" items by dubious outlets, spreading easily debunked myths and disinformation deliberately crafted to influence public discourse around sexual expression.
Using the "United Airlines Listens to Anti-Porn Crusaders and Cracks Down on Porn" fake news item as a case study, XBIZ has tabulated how after a week, the Google News ranking continues helping to spread the debunked story.
Faith-Based News and Mileage Blogs
Doing a Google News search for "'united airlines' porn" a week after the initial disinformation campaign by NCOSE, yields results related to the story within the first 30 news slots. Listing 10 results per page, the items are spread through the first three pages:
- Google News items that reproduce and amplify NCOSE propaganda: 10 items (Ranked 1-3, 5-6, 11, 17-18, 21, 30)
- Google News items that refer uncritically to NCOSE propaganda (in Roundups or Related Stories): 9 items (Ranked 4, 7-10, 13, 15-16, 19)
- Unrelated Google News items that come up in the search: 10 (Ranked 14, 20, 22-29)
- Google News item factually debunking the NCOSE propaganda: 1, Drew Fox's XBIZ article (Ranked 12)
A breakdown of these results shows how the Google News ranking process steers researchers in the direction of anti-porn propaganda:
- The first page (or, the first 10 results) contains five articles highlighting the NCOSE propaganda, one news roundup repeating the NCOSE claim, and four articles about related stories — Pornhub offering free porn to passengers quarantined in cruise due to coronavirus; NCOSE releasing another "Dirty Dozen" list; Southwest airlines "cracking down" on porn viewing on airplanes — that uncritically repeats NCOSE propaganda.
- None of the articles on the first page reflect the fact-based debunking of the NCOSE propaganda story by XBIZ.
- The "news sources" ranked among this top 10 by Google News are varied: No. 1, CBN News (a religiously motivated news site run by the powerful Christian Broadcasting Network); No. 2, One Mile at a Time (a blog devoted to maximizing mileage points for free plane tickets); No. 3, KHOU (a Houston, Texas-based CBS affiliate owned by the right-leaning, Virginia-based Tegna group); No. 4, Wisconsin Gazette (a progressive Milwaukee newspaper); No. 5, Independent Online (a South African news site); No. 6, The Irish Sun (an Irish tabloid owned by Fox News' Rupert Murdoch); No. 7, Lifesite ( a religiously motivated, anti-choice operation billing itself as "the #1 pro-life news website"); No. 8, Fox Business (another Rupert Murdoch company, responsible for the biggest amplification of NCOSE's bogus propaganda); No. 9, Paddle Your Own Kanoo (a blog targeted to people who want to become flight attendants); and No. 10, Christianheadlines.org (a religiously inspired news aggregator part of the Salem Web Network, marketed as "consisting of the most well-known brands in the faith marketplace such as Crosswalk.com, CrossCards.com and GodTube.com").
- None of these news sources have any known expertise in the adult industry. Each of them repeats NCOSE propaganda uncritically, either due to negligence, or a declared commitment to a religiously inspired agenda that aligns with NCOSE.
- The second page of Google News results has the XBIZ article on the second slot (No. 12), sandwiched between an editorial for the Victoria, Canada Times Colonist newspaper (No. 11) and a piece by Christian Post (an evangelical Christian Washington D.C. news org founded during the George W. Bush reelection campaign to influence the GOP agenda) praising NCOSE's latest "Dirty Dozen" list asking people to boycott companies that do not align with their anti-porn agenda.
- The XBIZ article is the only fact-checked, sourced article on the "United Airlines Bans Porn" story that appears as a Google News result.
These results were obtained on Wednesday, February 12 around 5 p.m. (PST), using a Chrome browser on a Mac laptop device. Rankings and results may vary.
As XBIZ's Drew Fox explained in his February 3 article, "NCOSE Makes False Claim Regarding United Airlines Sexual Harassment Policy," the often deceitful anti-porn propaganda lobby made a bogus self-glorifying claim that was then picked up by Rupert Murdoch's outlets and then magnified by a network of "faith marketplace oriented" publishers.
According to NCOSE, "with hundreds of messages flooding into United Airlines' Customer Service line this past year while the corporation — which employs over 85,000 people worldwide and flies over 150 million customers a year — was listed on the '2019 Dirty Dozen List,' United has now stepped up to combat in-flight sexual harassment and pornography use with improved training for its flight attendants."
XBIZ's Fox contacted United Airlines, which unequivocally denied NCOSE's claim.
A United rep confirmed that their revised sexual harassment policy is not related to adult content.
"It is not specific to the viewing of pornography," United Airlines Corporate Communications officer Kimberly Gibbs told Drew Fox last week.
When Fox asked her directly whether pressure from NCOSE prompted United Airlines' policy change, Gibbs responded, "In short, no. We strengthened our training in 2018 to address sexual harassment, not to address what is stated in the [NCOSE] press release."
Still, according to the impenetrable Google News ranking system, several religiously motivated news orgs, Rupert Murdoch's various international news shops, plus a couple of blogs for thrifty travelers and flight attendant hopefuls have it right. Even if NCOSE and their extremist puritan agenda — the well-funded lobby considers Sports Illustrated "hardcore pornography" — had absolutely nothing to do with a standard, commonsense HR policy by a major airline.
