By Bob Unruh
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
WND
The granddaughter of media mogul William Randolph Hearst is launching a campaign to cover up in stores issues of her family company’s Cosmopolitan magazine because of content she describes as pornographic.
In a news conference Wednesday at the National Press Club, Victoria Hearst, whose cousin, William Randolph Hearst III, is chairman of the Hearst Corp., said: “I love my family. I love the executives at Hearst. This is not ‘Mommy Dearest.’ This is simply me being concerned about getting porn out of the hands of children.”
Working with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, Hearst announced the CosmoHarmsMinors.com website to provide information about the magazine. She wants the press to grill the company about its practices and to encourage parents, grandparents and others to take direct action.
One option is to print out a page stating: “Warning! This is a PORN magazine. Do not sell to kids!” and take it to a local retailer and place it in front of any Cosmopolitan magazine in a checkout stand.
Dawn Hawkins, executive director of the NCSE, said, “Despite Cosmopolitan’s claim that it targets adult women, it regularly features teen icons and even Disney stars on its sexually provocative covers to entice younger audiences.”
In a statement, she said the magazine, while not reaching as low as Hustler magazine, is filled with pornographic essays, drawings depicting sex acts and other salacious material.
“Cosmopolitan magazine has declined from a somewhat inspirational women’s magazine to a pornographic ‘how-to’ sex guide, glamorizing topics such as group, anal, public or violent sex acts in nearly all of their issues,” she said.
Victoria Hearst said: “It contains graphic adult sexual material that, under most states’ material harmful to minors laws, is deemed pornographic. Under these laws it is illegal for stores to sell Cosmopolitan to minors, and illegal to display the magazine where minors can see it and look at its content. Unfortunately, the people in authority at the Hearst Corp. refuse to acknowledge that Cosmopolitan is pornography, and they refuse to put a label on the magazine identifying it as ‘adult material.’
“That is why the Cosmo Harms Minors campaign is necessary,” she said.
The campaign is urging stores to conceal the magazine cover and halt sales to minors.
“The people in authority on the board and in executive positions at the Hearst Corp., they are producing it, they are responsible for it. They need to take responsibility for what they print,” Victoria Hearst said.
WND calls to the Hearst Corp. and Cosmopolitan did not generate a response this week.
Among those in support of the campaign at the news conference was Judith Reisman, a top authority on famed Indiana sex-researcher Alfred Kinsey, who concluded that up to 95 percent of the members of the “Greatest Generation” were sex offenders.
Her research also revealed that some of Kinsey’s work was based on the work of child molesters.
Also supporting Hearst at the news conference was civil-rights activist and Christian minister Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr.
In 2012, Hearst spoke with WND about her campaign against Cosmopolitan’s pornography.
She explained that after she became a Christian, she felt called to speak with her family’s company about the explicit content, especially because of the influence the magazine can have on teenagers.
“The Lord started telling me, ‘You need to go talk to the company and tell them what they’re printing is wrong,’” she said then.
But she was rebuffed by the company executives.
At the time, the Hearst Corporation and Cosmopolitan magazine declined to respond to WND requests for interviews, sending only a statement.
“Cosmopolitan is the best-selling women’s magazine in the world for adults 18-34 years old,” the company said. “It’s about empowering women in all aspects of their lives, from relationships and career to health and beauty, and we believe in the First Amendment right to freely publish and display the magazine.”
Hearst at that point cited some of the magazine’s content, such as “Cosmo’s randy rules for taking a naked swim together,” “Sex Sun Fun: *New Erotica *Sundresses *Mostly-Naked Men” and “Sex He Craves, Inside: A Bonus Section So Hot, They Made Us Seal It.”
Initially published as a family friendly magazine in 1886 by Schlicht & Field, Cosmopolitan was purchased by John Brisben three years later and acquired in 1905 by William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper publishing magnate who is now known for building America’s largest newspaper chain.
Victoria Hearst said her grandfather turned it into a family literary magazine.
“I remember quite clearly in the ’60s, my father and other Hearst people discussing the fact that at Cosmo the sales were going down and what they were going to do with the magazine,” she said.
Then, Helen Gurley Brown, a leader of the feminist sexual revolution, took over.
“She was on all the talk shows talking about premarital sex and the whole thing,” Hearst said. “She was a hot commodity. So the company hired Helen to revive Cosmo. What Helen did was she took a family/general interest magazine and turned it into a sex rag.”
On Wednesday, Hearst said: “It’s a shame that we all have to be here this morning even discussing this. We’re not trying censor Cosmo. We’re not trying to put it out of business.”
But she said clearly it’s adult material and should be labeled as such.
Instead, she said, in Wal-Mart it’s “right up there with the gum and the candy and the TV Guide.”
“This is what we’re asking,” she said. “Wrap it.”
Author and pediatric physician Dr. Miriam Grossman joined Hearst at the news conference to talk about how exposure to such images injures children.
“I have a daughter and a granddaughter. I would much prefer they occasionally binge on French fries and ice cream than ingest all you see here,” she said. “This is toxic to the inner lives of girls.”
Hearst, daughter of Randolph A. Hearst, formed Praise Him Ministries in 2001, which includes Praise Productions Christian Store and Ridgway Christian Center.
