| Statement by Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of NCOSE | |
| Washington, DC – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) wrote a letter of concern to Comcast in May regarding Comcast’s distribution of exploitive, racist, and underage-themed pornography via its cable television programming. In a letter dated June 3, 2016, Comcast Senior Executive Vice President, David Cohen, replied to NCOSE refusing to remove its offensive and harmful pornographic content.
“Ultimately, Comcast’s goal is to provide our customers with choice and a wide range of programming options,” Mr. Cohen wrote. The full letter is available for review here. “To Comcast, valuable ‘customer choice’ means promoting and selling videos glorifying themes of incest, racism, sexism, prostitution, and exploitation,” said Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “Many of Comcast’s on-demand pornography offerings focus on sexually degrading specific races, and even on stepfathers or other adults exploiting ‘teenage’ girls. While the performers may be adults, much of the pornography attempts to accentuate first-time sexual experiences of females, as well as the purported youthfulness and sexual inexperience of the performers. Comcast is, therefore, catering to the sexual fantasies of consumers attracted to sex with the underaged.” “At present, our society is reeling from racial stereotypes and violence, colleges and universities are wrestling with an epidemic of sexual assault, thousands of young women and girls are being trafficked for purposes of prostitution, and child sexual abuse is 75 times more common than pediatric cancer. Yet Comcast steadfastly endorses and contributes to these trends by promoting material that normalizes a wide-range of sexual exploitation for mere profits. The anemic defense of consumer ‘choice’ does not mask Comcast’s flagrant social irresponsibility, open misogyny, and raw corporate greed,” Hawkins stated. “Comcast claims that its sale of pornography is within the bounds of the law,” Hawkins continued. “However, the pornographic material being distributed likely violates U.S. law, 18 U.S. Code Section 1468, which prohibits the distribution of obscene matter—otherwise known as hardcore pornography—by means of a cable or subscription services on television. The law is clear on this point, and we intend to inform the Department of Justice about Comcast’s persistent practice of peddling pornography.” “In addition to its vast on-demand pornography offerings, Comcast provides copious amounts of pornography via Playboy, Vivid, Hustler, and TEN subscription channels. All in all, there are, by one review conducted in April 2016, 515 X-rated offerings on XFINITY/Comcast,” Hawkins concluded. Some of Comcast On-Demand Pornography Offerings Include:
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation is calling on the public to email Comcast executives in order to insist that they stop selling pornography. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s annual Dirty Dozen List names top mainstream contributors to sexual exploitation. Comcast is a contender for the 2017 list. |
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