CANBERRA, Australia — The government-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation published a stigmatizing report Wednesday alleging a supposed link between a current STI epidemic and “online pornography.”
National public broadcaster ABC sensationally led the report with the shocking-if-true claim that “watching pornography is leading to an increase in the number of young people having unprotected sex and contracting gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).”
The only source quoted in support of this claim, however, was one “sexual health nurse and educator” named Vanessa Hamilton, who was promoting her business, Talking the Talk Healthy Sexuality Education.
This apparent paucity of actual expertise on the subject would seemingly explain why ABC deployed the passive voice in its headline, “Online Porn Blamed for Jump in Gonorrhea Infections as Race for Vaccine Heats Up.”
Hamilton told ABC reporters Nicole Dyer and Tom Forbes that "pornography was the only avenue many young people used to learn about sex. We really need to look at the broad picture when it comes to sexuality education. When I ask parents, 'Where are our kids getting their information from?' they say, TikTok, pornography, YouTube. Hardly anyone said parents, home or school."
According to the article, Hamilton “has spent 25 years working as a sexual health nurse” and this has led her to conclude that “many young people were watching pornography, which often involves penetration without the use of condoms.”
“We really need to eroticize condoms in an engaging way for young people,” Hamilton stated, without specifying whom she meant by “we” or how her mandate of eroticizing prophylactics might be enacted.
"The fear-and-danger approach of 'don't get a sexually transmitted infection' or 'don't get pregnant' doesn't really resonate," Hamilton added.
ABC then interviewed Kate Seib, an associate professor at Griffith University and a principal researcher at the university's Institute for Glycomics. Seib, an actual expert on STIs, spoke at length about the island nation’s gonorrhea epidemic, but at no point suggested any link between STIs and watching adult content online.