Critics of NYT Co., 'Metro Boston' Venture Target Porno Angle

By: Mark Fitzgerald First, The New York Times Co. faced criticism that its joint venture with Metro International's Metro Boston involved with top executives who found nothing wrong with cracking racist jokes.

Now, Times critics say the deal to buy 49% of the free commuter paper hooks up the Good Gray Lady with pornographers.

"The New York Times is considering a business move that would align it with a pornography company," says a story posted Jan. 18 on the Web site of Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian organization headed by Dr. James Dobson. The group's "media and sexuality analyst," Daniel Weiss, is quoted as saying: "If The New York Times is going to choose to befriend a company that distributes pornography, they're letting it be known that they have no problem with this."

On the opposite side of the spectrum, an article on Xbiz.com, which describes itself as "The Industry Source" for news about the "adult industry," says that as a result of the deal, "the Times will become corporate cousins with Modern Times Group, a Swedish company that telecasts adult programming throughout Scandinavia and the Baltics."

The adult industry site suggests a bit of hypocrisy on the part of the Times Co.: "Ironically, The Times in 2000 ran a front-page expose blasting mainstream companies, including many of the paper?s media rivals, for climbing into bed with the porn industry," Matt O'Connor wrote in the article posted Jan. 17 on Xbiz.com.

The Herald, local rival of the Times-owned Boston Globe, has tweaked the company over the deal, which, Greg Gatlin wrote Jan. 19, links "a freebie newspaper it's buying into and a Swedish porn purveyor that telecasts skin flicks across northern Europe."

At the center of the pornography connection is MTG's TV1000, which Xbiz.com described as "a controversial network that broadcasts a range of entertainment, including adult content." Norway's Ministry of Culture, the adult industry Web site said, complained in the mid-1990s that TV1000 "was broadcasting porn films in violation of that country's anti-pornography laws."

In a statement, the Times Co. said it is "completing its due diligence to acquire an interest in just one of 42 Metro International newspaper editions around the world, and therefore does not control or have responsibility for the other business activities of Metro International, its investors or other business partners."

"The Times Company owns neither Metro International nor
Modern Times Group, and does not propose to own either," the Times statement added.

A spokesperson for Metro International's U.S. unit, Ken Frydman, said in an e-mail that the company had no comment on the pornography issue.

This is the second time the Times has found itself answering questions about its corporate partners. Soon after the Boston deal was announced Jan. 4, reports surfaced of two occasions in which top Metro executives made racially disparaging jokes about black people. The two resigned Jan. 13.