The actor continues its effort to make the paper out of business, saying the publication's website Backpage.com is profiting from the underage prostitution victims.
- Jul 3, 2011
AceShowbiz - Ashton Kutcher's attacks on Village Voice are getting fiercer. The actor has tweeted to several companies who put advertising on the publication's site and has got positive responses from some of them.
Furious about the article that said he and wife Demi Moore used marked-up number for child prostitution, Kutcher alerted American Airlines, Domino's, Disney and Columbia University that they have advertised in a site that supports human trafficking. "Hey @disney @dominos are you aware that you are advertising on a site that owns and operates a digital brothel?" Kutcher tweeted.
So far, American Airlines has pulled its ads, writing "Heads up: Ads should be down w/in the hour. Blank ads are being served for now." Meanwhile, Domino's wrote to the actor, "please dm me the info on the site and I'll be sure to pass it on."
Kutcher and other advocates said that between 100,000 and 300,000 are at risk of underage prostitution, launching a campaign called "Real Men Don't Buy Girls". Voice published an article called "Real Men Get Their Facts Straight" where it is cited that the number of underage prostitutes is actually in the hundreds or thousands.
Kutcher, who has more than seven million followers on Twitter, argued, "There is great value in disputing the hard numbers and pointing to insufficient allocation of government spending and this effort would be commended if Backpage.com, which is owned and operated by the Village Voice, wasn't profiting off of the victims at the same time."
The Voice stood by its findings and suggested that the best move is to support a Senate bill to provide funding for shelter and counseling for underage prostitutes. "We're spending millions to keep kids off our adult pages. But @aplusk reveals he wants us out of biz because ADULTS use our adult pages!," the publication tweeted.
