CV NEWS FEED // Critics slammed the magazine Rolling Stone after it published a piece on House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, attacking him for preventing his minor son from accessing online pornography.
The article, titled “Mike Johnson Admits He and His Son Monitor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resurfaced Video,” was posted on the magazine’s website Sunday and is accessible to paid subscribers only.
Author Daniel Kreps referred to a speech Johnson gave last year at a Baptist church in his home state of Louisiana. In it, Johnson praised Covenant Eyes, crediting the popular anti-pornography app for helping keep his teenage son, Jack, away from explicit online material.
“It scans all the activity on your phone, or your devices, your laptop, what have you; we do all of it,” the lawmaker said during the talk.
“It sends a report to your accountability partner,” he continued.
My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell you, my son has got a clean slate.
According to the app’s website, it helped over 1.5 million people quit their pornography addictions since its original launch in 2000.
However, Rolling Stone’s Kreps called the successful software “creepy” and compared it to “Big Brother,” the antagonist of the George Orwell novel “1984.”
His piece quickly garnered a swift rebuke from various observers.
“What [Johnson] actually said is that he installed accountability software on his son’s devices to keep his son from using porn, and he put the same software on his own devices to show his son he wasn’t using porn either,” award-winning mystery author Daniel Friedman wrote on X.
“But Rolling Stone is a dishonest publication,” he added.
Friedman continued:
I think, if something like Rolling Stone’s [University of Virginia (UVA)] rape story scandal happened today, they would stand by the story, because their standards of journalism have eroded completely, and they no longer care about factual accuracy, just the ideological valence of the content they publish.
In 2014, Rolling Stone published an infamous defamatory article titled “A Rape on Campus.” The story was widely panned across the political spectrum and Rolling Stone was forced to retract it months later.
Eventually, the magazine was ordered by courts to pay millions of dollars to a UVA administrator and a fraternity.
“The concern over ‘misinformation’ is usually framed as people getting bogus news from randos on social media,” Friedman wrote. “But what doesn’t get acknowledged enough is how media outlets that used to be trusted, like Rolling Stone, the LA Times and NBC News, are now trafficking in propaganda.”
“This is how much the media hates Christians in leadership,” observed Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham:
Because Speaker Johnson has installed software on his and his family’s devices to ensure they don’t view porn, Rolling Stone implied he’s a pervert. And massive Dem accounts are now furthering this lie, going so far to suggest he must have abused his adopted son.
“This is how sick and hateful they are,” she wrote.
“Rolling Stone doesn’t even believe porn is wrong, so why do they care about this?” conservative attorney Jenna Ellis replied to the magazine’s X post of the story.
“Good for Mike Johnson for caring enough about his sons health and well being to not let him become another sexual degenerate like too many men have become,” wrote pro-life activist Kristan Hawkins.
Journalist Kyle Becker hinted that Rolling Stone may have published yet another potentially defamatory article.
“You know Mike Johnson’s son isn’t a public figure, right?” he wrote. “Might want to lawyer up.”
