Sex, Lies and Creative Reporting

In a recent post about what seems to be a new puritannical urge among policy makers, I mentioned this article about the alleged success of Sweden's sex ban. It was written a couple of years ago but it is typical of reporting on the subject.

A lot of things bothered me about the article, but the part I keep finding myself thinking about appears in this section, intended to give the reader a glimpse of the harsh reality of street prostitution:

It's 9 p.m. in Stockholm and Malmskillnadsgatan Street is dead. The road, infamous for being one of the city's main drags for street prostitution, used to be packed with women, but tonight only three women are working the street.

For a long while, nothing happens, but then an older man with alcohol on his breath comes up the escalator from the Högtorget subway station. He pauses briefly in front of one of the women. Then she walks about 10 meters away and signals to him to follow her to a more discreet spot.

Never mind for now that it evokes the harshest, cheapest street hooker scene, a small part of the sex trade, in order to make a total ban seem welcome. Never mind the subliminal placing of words like dead, infamous and working the street to increase the sense of despair and brutality (later in the article he uses the word "john" to impress us with his street credentials) or even the fact that the client is an older man (yuk, who'd want sex with that?) What really bothers me is "with alchohol on his breath".

How did the Spiegel reporter know that the older man had alchohol on his breath? He was watching the street "for a long while" so he couldn't have passed him on the subway escalator. I doubt that he was watching the street from a position near the woman, as the john wouldn't have approached her. He did not interview her afterwards or he would have mentioned it, doubtless with some suitable quote along the lines of "I do this to support my heroin habit and three children and avoid a beating from my pimp" to bring the point home. I can only assume he was watching the street from a position somewhere between the subway escalator and the hooker, and the man passed close enough for the reporter to smell his breath.

Or, he just made up parts of the story, or all of it, to support his conclusion. I can't help thinking that the second explanation is the more likely one.