The disgraceful sentencing last week of Michael Lacey, Scott Spear and Jed Brunst, in connection with the long-running, and punitive, trial over their involvement with defunct adult classifieds website Backpage.com, will get lost in the mainstream news shuffle as more important matters such as a CNN presidential poll, toxic masculinity and the Oasis reunion take precedence. That’s just slightly sarcastic: in fact, The New York Times ran a perfunctory, pro-prosecution article and The Washington Post, a newspaper where “democracy” dies in bright sunlight while pledging false allegiance to the First Amendment, published a brief Associated Press article.
The Times article was written by two members of the “Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.” The Big Guns. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof cheered the story on Twitter: “Backpage was the leading website for sex trafficking, often of teenagers, so it's good to see its founder finally sentenced to prison: I wish this marked an end to the impunity, but we still see some porn websites monetize sexual abuse of children, or nonconsensual deepfake sex videos of prominent women. Sex is great; rape and coercion aren't.”
I doubt Kristof, like his newspaper, followed the years-long trial closely, focusing on the words “Sex trafficking” instead of the First Amendment issues. In contrast, Reason’s Nick Gillespie tweeted: “For context—Backpage cofounder Michael Lacey was convicted on one count of money laundering. The federal prosecution was a joke that collapsed in the courtroom. All #1A supporters should be outraged.”
Aside from Front Page Confidential, Reason and local Arizona outlets, the near-conclusion (depending on appeals) of a government vendetta against Backpage that began in earnest in 2018 has received scant media attention over the years. It was too messy and convoluted for liberal reporters, who pick and choose their concepts of “democracy.” If the Little Old Lady From Pasadena received a vile letter-to-the-editor at her two-person community paper, that would be front-page news.
Unable to obtain convictions for alleged prostitution, conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges, Lacey, 76, was sentenced to five years in jail on a face-saving, and dubious, money-laundering charge; Spear and Brunst, also in their 70s, were sentenced to 10 years each for their work at the company. As Stephen Lemons, who’s doggedly covered the lengthy proceedings, wrote in Front Page Confidential, “The message from the feds seems clear: Do what we say or get the Backpage treatment. And don’t think the First Amendment will help you. Even if the entire case is overturned on appeal… that warning will ring loud and clear to website operators who are now ‘on notice’ that, no matter how much money they have, the government has the power to rip that all away and leave the lives and the lives of their loved ones in ruins.”
Just over a year ago, Jim Larkin, Lacey’s longtime business partner in the New Times chain of newspapers and then Backpage, took his own life, worn down after years of persecution, the seizure of nearly all his assets, and the never-ending barrage of government harassment. Disclosure: I’ve known Larkin and Lacey since 1979—one of their many close friends, they were invaluable in giving me advice with my weekly newspapers; the picture of Lacey above is from 1999, when he visited my family in Malibu, where we staying at my mother-in-law’s house—and upon Larkin’s death I wrote the following.
But this case is about more than friendship: it’s an example of how a grudgingly well-respected newspaper company that relentlessly investigated public figures such as Sen. John McCain, his wife Cindy, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio will eventually get punished for their reporting. It’s also true that in the 1980s and 1990s, “alternative newspapers” (such as my own Baltimore City Paper and New York Press), received significant revenue by publishing “adult entertainment” display and classified advertisements. No entity, aside from Lacey and Larkin’s Backpage (which cooperated with authorities in weeding out the unscrupulous) has, to my knowledge, ever been prosecuted.
In addition, it shouldn’t be ignored that presidential candidate Kamala Harris, as California Attorney General in 2016 initiated proceedings against Backpage as she was running for that state’s U.S. Senate seat. Reason’s 2020 video about Harris’ animus against Lacey and Larkin is telling. Does Harris take the First Amendment seriously? As Lemons—politically liberal—wrote: “Can the American people trust a rank opportunist who flagrantly engaged in prosecutorial misconduct? Democrats want voters to ignore Harris’s abuses of the public trust while in office, using the looming threat of a Trump presidency to distract from any thorough examination of her record.”
Brazil and Elon Musk, Harris and social media censorship threats, Keir Starmer and his arrests of UK commenters, and France (whose government is in disarray) being France, ought to chill Americans who take the First Amendment as a given, no matter their presidential choice in November.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023
