Why The Huffington Post's Kathleen Miles Could Use Some Classes In Journalism 101 (Or..How Shilling For AHF Can Fry Your Brain)

Mainstream media has never been known for their openmindedness regarding porn and porn performers to begin with.....but when something like a prospective STI "outbreak" occurs, it seems like they kick their myopia and instinctive paternalism into an even higher gear.

This is surprisingly enough true of even the more "progressive" media, which you would expect to be a bit more reality based and prone to actually investigate the facts...but when it comes to issues involving sex and porn, it is all too common for putative liberals to adapt the common neoliberal line that performers are simply too naive or slutty or whatever to be listened to, unless they speak the approved party line of "we must protect you from yourselves, since you are incapable of regulating yourself."

Such is the state of mind of one reporter for the Los Angeles bureau of the Huffington Post, Kathleen Miles, on her reporting of the recent HIV porn scare.

Last Tuesday, Miles posted an "exclusive" column under the guise of an interview with performer Cameron Bay, one of the infected performers, which seemed like a thinly veiled attempt to carry the propaganda line of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation: read, that the porn industry is essentially a meat grinder that chews its talent up and spits them out as disposable and diseased, and only AHF's solution of mandatory condoms can save such talent from such destruction and exploitation.

Now, it would take a whole fisking to decipher and debunk all of the assumed distortions and thinly veiled assumptions of that original article...but fortunately, The Real Porn Wikileaks has spared me the need for such with their excellent analysis. So, I'll just refer you over there.

However, Miles has now posted a follow up article today reporting on the press conference that AHF held yesterday which featured not only Bay and her boyfriend Rod Daily, but also two newly minted "victims" of the current HIV scare (performer Patrick Stone and an unamed "Performer #4" that had been hinted to by Weinstein in the past), as well as the old standbys Darren James (the point man in the original 2004 HIV outbreak that claimed him and 2 other performers), and Derrick Burts (the former gay "rentboy" and performer for hire who was infected in a condom only shoot in Florida).

And if anything, today's article might be worse for its lack of factchecking than the original. Mostly, it uses the guide of reporting the comments of the speakers of Weinstein's comments as gospel truth, without any regard for actually analyzing what they said for truthfulness.

The byline claim so subtly suggested by the risque title of Miles' piece was that Cameron Bay herself was sort of blindsided into doing that infamous Public Disgrace shoot for Kink.com on July 31st, and thusly was either tricked into or otherwise unprepared for the wildness that took place in that shoot.

For those who missed it, Bay did suffer injuries to her breast when one of the participants bit down on her just a bit too hard and damaged some internal tissue, which required treatment afterwards.

But I guess that that wasn't good enough to serve her new masters, so at the AHF presser, she fired off a new and far more disturbing claim:

With news cameras flashing, adult film performer Cameron Bay told reporters that in her last porn shoot before testing positive for HIV, her partner's penis was bleeding -- and he wasn't wearing a condom. After stopping momentarily, the cameras continued rolling, she said. 

[...]

Choking back tears, Bay continued to describe her last shoot, filmed at a public bar in San Francisco for Kink.com.

"There were up to 50 people in the room with us. And we were laying on top of them. And they were touching inappropriately," Bay said. "It all happened so fast. I didn’t realize how unsafe it was until I saw the pictures ... You're on a whole other level when you're doing something so extreme."

Bay told HuffPost last week that condoms were available, but not required at the shoot. She said she didn't think she needed to use a condom because her male costar had recently tested negative for sexually transmitted diseases, and she left the choice up to him. Kink.com confirmed to HuffPost that Bay was offered a condom, but it was not used.

That's some kind of naivete for a performer whom had been shooting porn for 2 years (9 months in Cali, but otherwise in her home base of Arizona), and whom had been shooting glory hole vids and even escorting out of her home (TRPWL posted an escorting ad she had posted back in May of 2011). It's as if she and her boyfriend had never heard of Kink.com and their protocols for shooting their BDSM scenes, or that she didn't think that in a sex scene involving more than, I don't know, 5 people, there would be some "inappropriate" touching.

And also, let's forget the fact that basic Kink.com protocols call for pre-shoot interviews with all performers involved in production so that they know what they are getting into, and also allow all participants to abort their scenes should even the notion of personal injury emerge.  So..why didn't Cameron, upon seeing the sight of her shooting partner's bloody penis, simply exercise her right to terminate the shoot and walk away? For that matter, why didn't she walk away right when her breast was bitten??

There is also that slight point that all Kink.com shoots involving hetero sex allows for the option of either one of the partners asking for the use of a condom during the shoot if wanted. (For gay or trans shoots, condoms are mandatory.) Bay claimed both in the first Miles interview and the AHF presser that she didn't take advantage of that right because she was assured that there would be no issue since her screen partner had tested negative prior to the shoot. She now claims that she would now request a condom if asked.

The assumption here by Bay (originally created by AHF puppetmaster Michael Weinstein and passed on by Kathleen Miles) was that it was this shoot in which she was infected, and that it was that act with the bloody penis which signified the essential threat of noncondomized sex that condoms would protect the performers from.

The problem is, however, that assumption doesn't fly too well with the fact that everyone who performed in that particular Public Disgrace shoot was tested and retested several times both before and following that shoot....and all were found to be free and clear of any virus, including HIV.

It should be noted that Weinstein is not exactly an impartial party to this battle; since AHF has filed an official complaint with Cal-OSHA for sanctions and fines for Kink.com over the Public Disgrace shoot, based on the assumption that Kink knew that Cameron Bay was HIV+ at the time she shot with them, but still carried on with the condom-free shoot anyway. That investigation is still ongoing.

But that distortion pales in comparison with what Miles does with one of the other "victims" paraded out by Weinstein yesterday. Here's what she types about Patrick Stone, the self-described "gay model" who claims, in spite of two subsequent negative tests, that he was infected and even offered a shoot by Kink.com while he said he was "infected":

Porn performer Patrick Stone told reporters he was asked to perform in a shoot even after he tested positive for HIV. He said he was told he was HIV-positive in an email on Sept. 10 from Performer Availability Screening Services, which handles STD testing for the industry. Stone said he never got a follow-up call or email from PASS, or from his employer Kink.com, to discuss the results or schedule follow-up testing. Instead, he got an email from Kink.com two days later inquiring about scheduling a shoot this week, he said.

Since then, Stone has taken two additional tests that he said show him as HIV-negative. He said he's awaiting results from a fourth and final test.

"It's been kind of a whirlwind week for me emotionally," Stone said. "I feel that the testing process for PASS is not working. If I was allowed to fall through the cracks like I did, who else is out there?

"I mean, they had me scheduled for a shoot tomorrow and as far as they knew, I was HIV-positive," Stone said.

Right. Sure. Uh-huh. Nuh-uh. FSCPASS protocols in fact do NOT simply call for any performer who tests positive or reactive for an STI to be merely emailed. They are explicitly called to their offices for direct one-on-one counseling, retesting, and, if needed, referal for treatment.  Natually, Stone doesn't say whether or not he used PASS for his retesting or whether he used AHF's antibody tests, which have been proven to be far less accurate and has a longer latency period for infections to escape detection. Plus, any positive tests are required to be reported to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health as required by law...and last time I checked, only Cameron Bay and "Performer #3" (whom has been confirmed as a female performer who was a close friend and possibly even intimate with Bay and Daily) had been confirmed by the LACDPH as being HIV+ through the PASS process.

And as for the other intimation that Kink.com deliberately went after Stone in spite of his "known" HIV status? Well, there's this from Kink's statement this morning:

On the straight side of the industry, 28 day testing is mandatory. If someone fails a test, they don’t work on a straight set. Period. Patrick Stone’s booking confirmation with us was tentative because we did not yet know his status; in order to shoot with Kink he would have had to retest clean. Anything else is either a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation.

Let us not forget that according to Stone's own testimony, the initial outreach by Kink for a shoot happened two days after he was allegedly informed via email by FSCPASS that he was HIV+. Unless Kink in San Francisco was getting free access to the FSCPASS database in Los Angeles, and had prior knowledge of Stone's tests, I'd consider it highly questionable that Kink knew of this change of status. Plus, it takes two to negotiate a booking, and why didn't Stone simply reveal to Kink that there was an issue with his medical status and respectfully deny the shoot?

In any rate, September 12th was also the date that Perfomer #3 was confirmed and the moratorium was reinstated, and any bookings by then would have been rendered null and void anyway. That was the main reason Kink required the retest in order to clear Stone for shooting.

A simple Google search or actually contacting Kink.com would have sufficed to debunk this attempted distortion.

To be fair to Miles, she did attempt a token balance of Stone's accusations, and then left it hanging:

Kink.com said that it did not know about Stone's positive HIV test when it scheduled him for the shoot.

"He had tested negative for us previously. Because of the moratorium, tests were not updated on the PASS system for producers (because no one was cleared for work)," Mike Stabile, spokesman for Kink.com, said in an email to HuffPost. "He would have been required [to take] a new test regardless before shooting."

Remember that FSCPASS had ordered a reset of all testing, with only those testing after today being cleared to shoot when the present moratorium is lifted on tomorrow.

One last caveat about Patrick Stone's allegation: it sounds so familiar, but I just can't remember where I last heard of it. Oh, yeah, now I remember...

Maybe Huffington Post Los Angeles should find themselves some better reporters...or just have their current columnists invest in some basic journalism classes. 

HIV Porn Scare 2013: AHF Money Flips Cameron Bay, Rod Daily; Invents 2 New "Victims"

Remember when I concluded my last post here with the caveat about how long it would be before AHF would manufacture another crisis to sell the condom mandate??

Turned out...it would take less than 24 hours.

Today, AHF finally broke out its propaganda big stick and attempted to regain control of the STI's in porn narrative with an online press conference on the current situation....and, trust me on this, it was much more than the usual clown show.

Oh, Michael Weinstein was there with his usual pontificating BS about how the industry simply chews up and spits out performers, along with the usual lies and talking points. But this time, he brought him some backup.

As in....none other than Cameron Bay and Rod Daily themselves.

The former Cameron Adams shed the usual tears about how life changing her infection has been, and leveled some new charges based on that now infamous Public Disgrace shoot of July 31 for Kink.com, where she and Weinstein effective imply that they were infected with HIV. The newest charge is that the performer who engaged with Bay in that scene had cut the tip of his penis and bled, yet still continued to do the act with her without a condom. Never mind that Kink.com protocols allow a performer in a straight sex scene the option of requiring a condom...and also never mind that all the other performers involved in that scene tested negative for HIV prior to and immediately since that scene took place.

And as for Rod Daily??  He played the "good cop" side of the routine to a perfectly crossed "T",  speaking only positive and inspirating things about how condoms protected him from HIV even while he performed on the gay/TS side with openly infected performers. That's nice, but does that cover his off-screen activity? Or, the fact that, after having used the FSCPASS tests for years to document his sterling record of cleanliness, he all of a sudden went rogue in August and abandoned them for a non-PASS test that turned up positive? Or...maybe it was the fact that the FSCPASS tests went full panel, including tests for Hepatitis C, which caused his hesitation?

Now, Daily does have a preplanned excuse: he didn't want his test results "leaked". Which explains why he was so busy practically throwing his prior test unredacted at people prior to last July, right?? Then again, Weinstein (through his usual sockpuppets) was making noises at that time (and repeated the charge today) that Cameron Bay's test results had been breached by FSCPASS doctors...a charge that was publically denied by PASS and Cutting Edge Testing's Dr. Peter Mao.

But, apparently, flipping Cameron Bay and Rod Daily to the Dark Side by paying for their treatment and medication wasn't enough for Darth Weinstein, so he decided to break out two new victims to throw into the propaganda mix.

The first one was the infamous "Performer #4" that Weinstein had been hinting at since last week. ID'd only as "John Doe", P#4, who described himself as a crossover performer, testified that he had gotten infected sometime in the past six months. However, he refused to offer any other information on exactly when he was diagnosed or infected, or what tests flagged his infection. Most certainly, he never used the PASS testing regimen...and he offered no evidence or even charge that he was infected on an adult set.

The second new "victim" was a performer named Patrick Stone, who described himself as a gay porn model whom had shot on/off since 2010, including bareback scenes. His claim to fame here was that he was a part time performer for Kink.com's gay section (which, BTW, requires condoms), and that he was propositioned by Kink to perform a scene in mid-August, in between the two moratoriums imposed. But, like P#4, he clammed up on exactly what nature of a shoot it was (gay, hetero, or BDSM), or whether or not Kink knew of Stone's status when they offered him the shoot a week in advance. Plus, Stone prefaced his remarks with the revelation that his "infection" may in fact be a false positive.

Of course, you can't have any AHF propaganda conference without Derrick Burts and Darren James present to cheerlead...though one would wonder why Weinstein would continue to send these two out, considering their histories.

By now, the point of today's assault should be obvious: Weinstein wants to blow up the FSCPASS testing regimen as bogus and a failure (even inventing the hashtag #PASSFAIL) because it failed to flag the infection status of these five people. Thusly, according to such illogic, testing is a failure and no real protection...but condoms are a fail safe 100% means of protection because...well, it protected Rod Daily and Patrick Stone, well didn't it?

The problem, as always, for Weinstein and his associates is that the scoreboard still hasn't changed, regardless of their attempts to move the goalposts and buy ringers. Six hours after AHF began this latest charade of a press conference, the cold hard fact remains that every active performer who performed with Cameron Bay on set since her last clean test has come up negative for HIV. Every active performer who performed on Kink.com with either Cameron Bay or Rod Daily who was NOT HIV+ before then, is still not HIV+ since then.

And, if anything, this episode actually proves how valuable the system is, because just imagine what would have happened if Cameron Bay had NOT decided to take that PASS test in August, but had gone over to the same antibody test that Rod Daily and apparently the other "victims" had used. Suppose that test had missed her seroconversion and gone negative, and she and Daily had continued to shoot porn and otherwise engage in extracurricular activity unknowing that she was actually infected. Suppose that there had been no original moratorium to begin with due to the PASS system flagging the positive/reactive result and triggering the testing protocols.

Oh..and one last bit of thought: Cameron Bay had originally said in another interview that got transpired into a Huffington Post column (more on that bit of propaganda anon) that she was motivated to get tested in mid August by the brohaha over Andre Gorz and his Hepatitis C issues. For those of you who missed it, it was megaperformer Lisa Ann who blew the whistle on Gorz when she scheduled (then aborted) a shoot with him in order to force him to reveal his tests. The motivation for LA was that Gorz had all of a sudden disappeared from the approved FSCPASS "whitelist" of cleared performers during July due to his Hep C prognosis, yet he was still able to get shoots in spite of that.

To summarize: five performers who more than likely contracted HIV through either their own private extracurricular activity and/or took advantage of the different system of protection on the gay side of the industry, were sucessfully isolated and prevented from infecting other performers on the straight side unwittingly thanks to the PASS system of screening and testing. It is that system that Michael Weinstein and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation want to destroy in order to impose his condom mandate and make his fortune off strategically placed condom ads and paid endorsers.


Sources for this post:
XBiz report on today's AHF press conference
XBiz report on FSCPASS's response
The Real Porn Wikileaks blog response
Gram Ponante's response
Kink.com CEO Peter Acworth's response (via TRPWL) (via XBiz)

HIV Porn Scare 2013 Update (Part 1): Outbreak?? What Outbreak?? Still NO On-Shoot Infections Found

Earlier this week, when it was first broken that a third performer other than Cameron Bay and her boyfriend Rod Daily had been found to be infected with HIV, it sure looked as if the porn world was in extreme disarray. Calls for mandatory condom usage were being shouted from the rooftops from far more than the usual suspects like the AIDS Healthcare Foundation or their newly discovered BFF's like "President" Rob Black and Mike South, but from even some respectable voices from within the industry.

But, as usual with these things, the wisdom of staying calm and waiting for actual events has proven to be as beneficial as always.

On Wednesday, the Free Speech Coalition's Performer Accessibility Screening Services (PASS, or FSCPASS) issued a statement updating their talent base on the process of testing protocols for Performer #3. As of then, they had concluded testing on all of P#3's first generation contacts, and all tests had been found to be negative regarding HIV status.

The statement also addressed the report of a possible fourth performer infected with HIV, based upon comments by AHF head Michael Weinstein that were leaked to both the British journal The Guardian and to the US-based gossip site The Daily Sword. According to them, there was no confirmation of any other performer infected, and the source should be highly questioned based on the propaganda motives of AHF.

A bit more intriguing was that later that day, The Real Porn Wikileaks posted their own exclusive, containing a rough timeline based on their investigations of the brief career of P#3 and her intimate relationship both professional and personal with Bay and Daily. All signs there point to what amounts to be an isolated incident of extracurricular activity and just plain bad luck.

Despite all that, FSCPASS announced that they would delay lifting the moratorium on porn production until their follow up investigation was completed regarding any off-set contacts with any of the three infected performers.

Their position was further strengthened by what could be considered a surprising source, given their history: the porn talent agency ATMLA issued their own statement regarding P#3 (whom was contracted through their agency) verifying FSCPASS' results and supporting the overall testing regime, as well as asking everyone to respect the privacy of all the performers who have been infected.

All of this lends serious credence to the comments that Immoral Productions head "Porno Dan" Leal posted to his Facebook page this week:

It is very clear that these transmissions occurred off camera and that if these people did not try and do porn scenes they probably would not know they have HIV.

No one in the adult industry industry got HIV on set; furthermore these three individuals with HIV now know they have it because of porn and will not spread it others.

Porn is not blame for what people do off camera and in this instance helped save lives.

In short, the FSCPASS system may have actually prevented a wider HIV outbreak not only in porn, but in real life. But, we all know that "testing isn't prevention"....right, Mr. Weinstein??

[And there's more to this story.....continued in Part 2.]