Flutterby™! : media decisions aren't merely driven by traffic

World Without Exploitation has released a short PSA on YouTube featuring survivors of Epstein's child rape ring.

MeFi user Smedly, Butlerian jihadi notes:

This gets me a little too heated to express my entire sentiments reasonably, but the TL;DR is that we can absolutely see from just those emails that have been released that the broad outlines of this situation were always widely known among the establishment and their courtiers in the upper levels of media.

There is a canard that gets trotted out when people are critical of the media, which is that their decisions are driven by traffic -- what will drive clicks is given more attention. This story, if nothing else, categorically demolishes that defense. Media coverage is structured to create a narrative that serves the interests of the privileged classes, full stop. If they had wanted to make this a massive scandal driving huge surges in traffic, they absolutely could have. And again, the broad outlines of the scandal were demonstrably well known.

It is instructive to contrast how this would be covered if it were attractive white teenage girls being trafficked and exploited by people of color, organized into gangs or otherwise.

At some point there should be pitchforks and guillotines for the people who covered this up, and that's the limit of what I will say here.

Also Via and Via.