KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Following a growing trend of mainstream news organizations who misrepresent anti-porn crusaders by concealing or omitting their status as a missionary or member of the clergy, Kansas City, Missouri NBC affiliate KSHB broadcast today a report about a supposed rise in female “porn addiction” without disclosing that the person at the center of this report is, in fact, a “pastoral counselor.”
The segment, which also includes a written version, was presented by NBC 41 Action News Anchor Taylor Hemness and headlined “Kansas City-area porn addiction counselor says client list grew during pandemic.”
Hemness only referred to his interviewee, Crystal Renaud Day, as “a Kansas woman who specializes in counseling women with sex and pornography addictions.”
Renaud Day repeatedly referred to herself as “a clinician,” although a simple web search reveals her own official bio, where she describes herself as “a pastoral counselor, life coach, speaker and author based in Kansas City. With over a decade of ministry experience, she works with women, couples and teen girls on a variety of emotional and relational issues.”
This deceptive KSHB report arrives only a few days after a similarly misleading U.K. report by the BBC’s education editor that failed to mention that “a father of four” foregrounded in an article about supposed “porn harms” was in fact, as XBIZ has reported, a campus pastor and clergyman who also makes religious anti-porn videos on YouTube.
The BBC never disclosed this relevant fact, nor did it make any attempts to correct their story when it was brought to their attention by XBIZ.
Missouri news anchor Taylor Hemness led Renaud Day — who does not appear to have any scientific or medical training in human sexuality or brain chemistry — into spreading the myth that porn is “an addiction” that “affects the same pleasure center of the brain that alcohol and drugs do.”
Hemness ended the segment with an infomercial for Renaud Day’s pseudo-clinical practice, which is actually a Christian ministry, although this information was not shared with his viewers.
According to her official biography Renaud Day’s degree is an MACP, which stands for Masters of Art in Pastoral Counseling.