Kentucky senate candidate Rand Paul is being partially bankrolled by the porn industry, apparently. At least that’s the story that the AP’s Bruce Schreiner is pushing today. This is what appears to be the AP’s most recent hit job on Paul. Schreiner in particular has been accused of subtle bias (compare the headline to the text) in his Rand Paul reporting even before this story today.
What’s the evidence for today’s story? Zivity cofounders Cyan Banister and Scott Banister made personal donations to the Rand Paul campaign totalling $4,800. The Paul campaign has raised a total of over $3.5 million. Donors must state where they work, so they wrote down Zivity, says Cyan.
Despite the fact that the donations weren’t from Zivity, and that Zivity would barely fall under the definition of pornography, people are calling for Rand to return the money. Says someone who has no idea what he’s talking about:
“A lot of Kentuckians would have a problem with a candidate accepting money from organizations that are tearing down the culture,” said Martin Cothran, a policy analyst for The Family Foundation of Kentucky. “And we assume that the Paul campaign understands that.”
Schreiner himself seems to have little knowledge of Zivity either. By phone yesterday he asked me if I could tell him more about the site. He had not, apparently, ventured farther than the home page.
The fact is Zivity is nowhere near as graphic as mainstream television. Sexual acts are never shown, and often the models aren’t even undressed. A typical Saturday evening on Showtime or HBO would be far more likely to “tear down our culture,” in the words of whoever that guy is. And I doubt the AP would be trying to make a big deal out of a HBO employee making a donation to a campaign.
Meanwhile, the story has hit TV, although without Zivity being mentioned. Viewers must be imaging some really hot adult action bankrolling the Rand campaign.
This is a textbook example of hidden bias in the mainstream press. If the AP dislikes Rand Paul they should just come out and say it. Getting some crazy idiots in Kentucky to give them uninformed quotes instead is just so lame.
Zivity, a San Francisco start-up which launched at TechCrunch40 in 2007, is a premium subscription and fan interaction platform. They celebrate artists through crowd sourced curation and editorial moderation of photography that highlights unique beauty. Fans freely interact with artists and vote for their favorite content. These dollar-backed votes are then used to reward artists with cash payments. In July 2009 Zivity spun off Top Fans into a separate company.
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