Harvard Current Reports McCain Ad Found on Porn Site

A Harvard student magazine which gained national attention earlier this year for breaking news on Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura is back in the spotlight with a report that the presidential campaign of Sen. John S. McCain (R-Ariz.) advertised on a pornography website.

Harvard Current Editor Dona M. Kim '01 said she came across an advertisement for McCain's presidential campaign when she happened to click on the website "Asians Nude" in mid-January.

The site, which claims to be the "Number One Asian Site on the Net," featured a McCain banner at the top of screen, Kim said.

The Current issued a press release calling attention to the ad, and the story has since been picked up by ABCnews.com, the Hotline, the Matt Drudge Report, C-Net and other publications.

The Current has also sent the press release to the presidential campaign of Alan L. Keyes '72, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN, the Christian Coalition and the George W. Bush Campaign.

The Current issued the press release in time for their Spring 2000 issue--scheduled to be distributed in the beginning of March--which will cover the story in more detail.

The McCain ad, which no longer appears on the website, appeared on the pornography site as part of a contract with www.theglobe.com, an Internet network that sells ad space on a variety of sites.

The McCain 2000 campaign purchased ad space from theglobe.com that would target Internet users according to their geographic location, not the content of site they viewed, Director of Advertising Sales at theglobe.com Will Margiloff told the Current.

The ad was run on the site in mid-January, probably as an attempt to target voters in the northeast in hopes of gaining votes in the New Hampshire Primary, Dona Kim said.

The ad contract did not place any limitations on the content of the sites upon which the ad would appear. As a result, McCain 2000 may not have been aware that their ad ran on the website.

"I was sort of amused that [McCain] wasn't aware enough to see what had happened, " Dona Kim said.

Bom S. Kim '00, the Current's co-founder and co-president, said that the magazine has received "a flood of e-mails" about the report.

Dona Kim said many of the letters accused the publication of trying to villify McCain. She said The Current denies such accusations and stresses that it is a non-partisan magazine.

This is the second issue of the year for the Current, which was founded at Harvard in 1999 and is now distributed to students at 20 universities.

The Current also drew national media attention last year, when it reported that Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura would consider a bid for the presidency if his state's voters rallied behind him.