The staff at the Village Voice, working under Tony Ortega, had a reputation in New York City for ruthless retaliation on people that poked their nose into its classifieds section, Backpage. Readers of this blog will recognize Backpage as the human trafficking site which tried to cloak itself under the First Amendment’s “Freedom of Speech” clause. In the twisted logic of the Backpage the “Freedom of the Press” guaranteed in the Constitution means one can call “classifieds” part of the “press” and sell human beings in the classifieds section.
As reported in a piece earlier earlier this week during his tenure as Backpage apologist and attack dog, Tony Ortega attempted to to discredit his critics by smearing them in the pages of the Village Voice.
This is exactly what happened when Ashton Kutcher found himself in Ortega’s crosshairs for daring to speak up against the role Ortega was playing in pimping human trafficking.
The next victim of Ortega’s vitriol was to be reporter Amber Lyon at CNN for her exposé of child prostitution on the website who accused the network of “junk science” and “mass paranoia,” criticizing the broadcast as a “sensationalistic piece” that was “manipulative” and part of “a semi-religious crusade.
