SEX, SAUNAS AND THE 'EVENING NEWS'

When it comes to sex, the Edinburgh Evening News position can charitably be described as muddled. Arms, legs and gussets everywhere, but no obvious sense of direction.

Cast your mind back to March of last year and the capital tabloid’s vinegar-lipped response to plans for an erotic festival here (Breaking news, 12.3.12). Spurtle’s Google research soon showed that, contrary to appearances, the paper has been feverishly interested in all manner of unusual sexual proclivities for as long as anyone can remember. Sex clearly sells.

Last Friday, by contrast, the Evening News found sex – or, more accurately, sex for sale – rib-ticklingly funny. Its front-page hilariously conflated Council leader Andrew Burns with Mel Gibson, brothels with drinking Pinot Grigio outdoors, and patriotic sentiment with ‘our’ alleged Edinburgh attachment to prostitution. As an exercise in misplaced levity, it rivalled even a UKIP conference.

Once more into the jacuzzi

The next day – on Saturday 21 September – the Evening News once more jumped headlong into the jacuzzi of sauna-news, only this time wearing some deeply thoughtful budgie-smugglers to cover its modesty.

Pages 1, 4 and 5 included pictures of a scantily clad blonde and various silhouettes, hinting at shadowy big-names threatened by exposure. That day’s Leader on page 15 – curiously, given the acres of previous reportage – mimbly-pimbled that ‘The vast majority of us would rather not have to think about what goes on in these establishments and find the idea of prostitution distasteful at some level’. 

Now – shaking its head like some kindly old judge with a great deal of relevant experience – it generously recommended adopting a gentle touch: ‘But we are on the whole willing to consider the issue pragmatically rather than simply as a moral dilemma. And that is surely the right thing to do’.

The right thing to do? Possibly. The profitable thing to do? Certainly. On page 34 of the self same issue, under the heading ‘Entertainments’, there appeared no fewer than 9 advertisements for city saunas, 8 of them boasting, for example, ‘Free Entrance’, ‘Unlimited Free Parking’, ‘ALL NEW GIRLS’ and ‘OPEN FOR BUSINESS AS USUAL’.

The colour of money

These colourful classifieds – at first glance resembling a row of jolly beach huts rather than dingy basements – cost about £15 each, with discounts offered for serial insertions. Short linage adverts of the kind regularly publicising ‘Escort Agencies’ in the Evening News normally cost between £5 and £7 each. Such sums may seem trifling in isolation, but they soon accumulate and have raked in thousands over the years.

The upshot of all this is that – when it comes to selling adverts to city saunas whose activities it supposedly finds distasteful and about which it would rather not think – the Evening News seems to have either resolved or learned to ignore any troubling moral dilemmas it may once have had.

Indeed, what we took as a grammatically clumsy sentence earlier may actually reflect the paper's true corporate state of mind: perhaps it really would prefer not to 'have to ... find the idea of prostitution distasteful at some level'.

Unfortunate impression

Some people will say that tabloids should not be taken seriously when it comes to their opinions on sex or anything else. Others will argue that journalists should lay off making lofty-sounding pronouncements on aspects of the Edinburgh sex-trade so long as their organ profits from servicing the Edinburgh sex-trade's most visible businesses. Spurtle agrees.

Making money from sauna adverts may be pragmatic, but in this case it gives an unfortunate impression of vested interest and rank hypocrisy. It is surely not the right thing for the Evening News to do.

What do you think about the Edinburgh Evening News's position? Let us know by email spurtle@hotmail.co.uk on Facebook Broughton Spurtle or Twitter @theSpurtle

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Reactions and update

@theSpurtle I'd love to know what prop of their budget comes from motoring adverts...

@SRDorman @theSpurtle Not that they're in the habit of criticising cars as being "distasteful"...

 

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The Rev. Archie Brookes – formerly of Broughton, now in Morningside – contacted us following publication of the article above. He wrote to the Evening News in January of this year, and has given us permission to reproduce the text of his email, which we do undedited and in full.

Dear EEN,

As an avid reader of your publication, and one based in Edinburgh I wonder how you can justify advertising 12 brothels as saunas in your small ads? Surely its not for the same reason the council recently granted them entertainment licensees can it?

For if they are actually suanas and not brothels I would be happy to go along with one of your journalists and see whats on offer.

Please stop advertising these places and please reply to let me know what your doing to stop it, or I might have to encourage my congregation to stop buying your newspapers!

Many thanks,

Rev Archie Brookes

Brookes received a reply soon afterwards from Richard Bogie (Group Advertising Director, Johnston Press [Scotland]) which he (Brookes) has also shown to the Spurtle.

Mr Bogie said that Johnston Press worked closely with the local council and police to ensure that all saunas advertising in the Edinburgh Evening News ‘are licensed and therefore genuine businesses’. Bogie also drew attention to a code of advertising practice covering all areas of business. Johnston Press, he said, is meticulous in ensuring that advertisers adhere to this code.

Hence, Bogie did not think it appropriate to withdraw the advertising as Rev. Brookes had requested.

Johnston Press's use of language here is confusing. What exactly is meant by a 'genuine business'? One that is properly run? Or one which genuinely operates as a sauna rather than as anything else?

If Mr Bogie means the former, it is surely irrelevant to the Evening News's professed 'moral dilemma' about the sex industry. If Mr Bogie means the latter, he is surely naive. Johnston Press's own journalists have described in print how conventional massage services are not offered to members of the public at these saunas in the same way as other services

On 27 July, senior reporter Ian Swanson described in detail a 'secret report' to councillors on just this alleged disparity between supposed and actual activities in such businesses ('Edinburgh saunas: Viagra and santa claus suit found'). In the article he also made clear that unnamed saunas were also suspected of being fronts for criminal activities, including the supply of drugs. 

The continued appearance of sauna adverts in the Johnston Press (and the Evening News) is therefore, at best, highly questionable. In his correspondence with the Spurtle, the Rev. Brookes now concludes that mobilising ‘public pressure’ may be a more effective way to curb their appearance in future.

Spurtle today (27.9.13) sent the following open email to Mr Bogie, and we await a reply.