CHICAGO: There are no adult ads in this week's edition of the Orlando (Fla.) Weekly -- just a blank page where they would be -- and there might not be any in the alternative paper next week, either.
Orlando Weekly Publisher Rick Schreiber, in a brief telephone conversation with E&P Friday, said no decision had been made about whether to run the ads for massage parlors, escort services, and other businesses that advertise in the adult services section. Schreiber said he could not comment because of the ongoing criminal case against three Orlando Weekly salespersons.
Those salespeople were arrested last week at a job fair sponsored by the newspaper, and charged with aiding and abetting prostitution and benefiting from its proceeds. The three sold ads to undercover agents of the local law enforcement agency, the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI), who allegedly explicitly said they were taking out the advertisements to solicit prostitution.
In this week's print edition, the alternative paper published a cover story entitled "Operation MBI Shame," a play on the code name the MBI gave its two-year investigation into adult advertising at the newspaper: "Operation Weekly Shame."
"The MBI has a jaw-dropping list of transgressions stretching back to its inception in 1978," the article states. "The MBI is an inept, inefficient police organization answerable to no one... And if you dare confront the agency on their appalling record, they will try to put you out of business."
In a statement released earlier this week, Schreiber said the paper's advertising policy "is based on the First Amendment of the United States and 100 years of past practice." The policy, he added, is: "We will not accept or publish any proposed advertisement which promotes or supports criminal activity."
He said the ads the paper were running were no different from those carried by numerous other local publications including the Orlando Sentinel, Verizon Yellow Pages, and the Orlando Gay Yellow Pages.
"However, Orlando Weekly is apparently the only target of the MBI's plan to eliminate advertisements for these types of services," Schreiber said. "We suspect that the MBI has targeted our company because we are the only newspaper in the area that has been critical of the MBI in a series of investigative articles over the years."
On its Web site Friday, the adult classified categories was blank. In its place was this statement:
"Adult Services will not be running this week because Orlando Weekly cannot ensure that doing so will not result in additional arrests of its employees by local police. In its place this week we offer the text of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
