MediaWeek reports Fairchild Publications has pulled 680,000 copies of YM Your Prom because an ad mistakenly carried the URL for a child-porn website. Two of the six ad pages prom dress maker Studio 17 placed in the issue contained the URL. While Fairchild is pulling as many issues as it can, Hearst, which publishes Teen Prom, in which the ad also appeared, has decided not to pull copies.
A Hearst spokesperson explained the decision telling MediaWeek, “This was a mistake on the advertiser’s behalf – in fact, the error also appeared in their own catalogue. This is a very unfortunate situation and, quite simply, the result of human error. We’ve received very few complaints and have handled them immediately.”
While no one’s talking, we’re guessing the URL may have been studio17.com (a redirect to https://www.clubseventeen.com/index-int.html) which is, most assuredly, a teen porn site. Very not safe for work.
Porn, of course, is everywhere and most likely no surprise to most teens but we think it might have been a wise move if Hearst had , at least, made some sort of effort rather than simply saying, hey, they made the mistake so why should we care.
