Why the Press Conflates Prostitution with Sex Trafficking—and Why That's a Threat To Free Speech

In the early 1970s, Michael Lacey and James Larkin helped reshape the media landscape by making Phoenix New Times one of the scrappiest alt-weeklies of all time. Along the way, they built an underground media empire based on their "desert libertarianism"; over time they came to control a slugger's row of legendary outlets, ranging from SF Weekly to Cleveland Scene to the granddaddy of all alternative papers, The Village Voice. In 2004, they founded Backpage, an online advertising site that quickly became Craigslist's main competitor. Earlier this year, the site was seized by the federal government, which claims it was a hub for prostitution and sex trafficking.

In a blockbuster new story, Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown says "the story of their arrest...is better understood as one of near-religious fervor, government greed, and political retribution, in which an escalating panic over commercial sex coincided with a booming online publishing platform."

In the latest Reason Podcast, I talk with Brown about the flimsiness of the federal case against Lacey and Larkin, the problems with conflating prostitution among consenting adults with the trafficking of children, and why the media seem incapable of telling the difference.