Crawley News sensation!

Today the Crawley News had a splash on the front page (actually page 3 as it had yet another of those outer-page advert thingys):

"ANGER OVER ESCORT AD

Teenage girls could be lured into £1000-per-night escorting work from an advert placed in a shop window"

Pretty shocking stuff, huh? The advert reads "Wanted - female 18+ to earn good money. £30+ per hour. Open minded, fun work immediate start".

In a masterpiece of investigative reporting, a female reporter called the number and got more details. A few residents, and a councillor are reported as (surprise surprise) thinking this advert is 'shocking', 'outrageous', 'wrong for this sort of area' and so on.

Well, I'm certainly glad that the Crawley News brought this to our attention. After all, it's not as if Crawley is already fairly well known as having a number of adult services being offered - apparently the airport draws in a lot of 'trade'.

However, I wonder if the Crawley News reporters ever read their own paper. For example, this week on page 55 we have the 'Adult' section of the classifieds has:

• 6 ads for Adult Chat lines
• 1 ad for 'The Honeypot' for Adult Massage
• 1 large ad for 'No strings dating contacts' with 8 ladies briefly described
• 2 ads for Escort services

But best of all under the heading "Staff Required":

"GLAMOROUS LADIES REQUIRED for prestigious escort agency. Please leave name and number for interview"

Below which is a blue box to try and encourage people to place ads in the Crawley News.

Now, did the reporters really have to expose the dodgy nature of an ad in the Tilgate newsagents, when pretty much the same thing is being delivered to every household in the town? I would call the number myself, so as to launch my own 'exclusive', but my impersonation of a female is not very good. Perhaps the Crawley Observer will look into this possible scandal? (of course, I don't buy the Obs, so I have no idea if the same sort of ads appear in their classifieds, or in the Herald, which I think is part of the same stable).

Local newspapers - as ethical as ever, eh?