Self-Proclaimed Sex-Trafficking Champion Resigned From Own Org Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations
mediaite.com
Ballard became more of a known quantity after the release of the movie Sound of Freedom, a dramatization of his mission in which he was played by actor Jim Caviezel. Critics of the film have argued that Ballard’s claims about his accomplishments have been “dramatically overstated or without clear documentary evidence.”
"Sex-Trafficking Champion" in title is very unclear and implies the opposite of possible intent. (He claims to fight sex-trafficing, not to be really good at sex-trafficing.)
Sorry, we aren't supposed to change headlines. Honestly, the important thing here is that this guy was a conservative icon and his movie was touted as being "suppressed" by the "woke."
I did not mean to diss you. My insult was fully intended for the original editor that titled the story. Sorry for not being clear.
Thank you for following the posting rules, and for spreading this news.
No worries.
But the headline in the article is “ ‘Sound of Freedom’ Hero Resigned From Own Organization Over Shocking Sexual Misconduct Allegations: Report” so you changed it?
No. I clicked the automatic headline thingy when I submitted the article and that's what came up.
Oh ok. I haven’t submitted an article on Lemmy yet, so I wasn’t aware of how that works.
Who the hell thinks that's what Champion means? Figure-skating Champion, Hot Dog Eating Champion, Heavyweight Champion. This another AI article?
Champion of the people is also an accepted use of the word. As in, championing a cause.
Its just used that way to make it less wordy. Like when people say "Raising money for cancer" instead of "raising money for cancer research". I always find it mildly humorous but the intent is obvious.
Champion can technically also refer to a notable advocate for something, like a "champion of human rights," or even as a verb in the same way, "we champion diversity here at Tech Corp Z" etc.
It definitely feels like an AI article. Humans don't write things like " he became a known quantity" in this context..
If you defeat the world's greatest sex trafficker you inherit the championship. I don't make the rules.
It's always the people you most suspect. Also, how is that not an Onion headline?
Something tells me none of the clowns who were pushing that movie on Facebook are ever going to hear about this.
I'm not on Facebook but I did go watch the movie with my daughter and definitely thought it was a good film,as did she. I honestly couldn't give a rat's ass about the politics.
It's a verifiably trash movie. It's not even remotely realistic in its depiction of child trafficking. "Giving a rats ass about the politics" is people understanding that it's garbage conservative propaganda and nothing more.
So you think it would be better to not have a movie talking about it at all so that it wasn't in conversation? The poor attempt is better than none, in my opinion.
I've watched plenty of historical movies about events that have transpired in the past, which weren't completely accurate, and none of them got canceled for it so I don't get rhetorical differenc tbh, except this bullshit politics angle.
Since when is having accurate information in a documentary political? Thats why its getting blasted. You don't present bad information about human trafficking. Sure, that Dinosaur Planet shit has inaccurate shit about dinosaurs, but its about dinosaurs. It doesn't directly harm anybody. This shit bag does.
If it misleads people and misinforms them about the problem, yes. This paints a false narrative of hero militant types rescuing kids from shady orgs when the reality is that kids need to be saved from family members and others close to home. This messaging harms real efforts to save kids by recasting the issue in ways that are more exciting and less authentic. If you don't see that, I don't know any way to persuade you.
But it brings light to the situation, and brings the situation into conversation. Those are both good things.
My takeaway was absolutely not that kids get to rely on some fucking military dude to come save them.. And if you watch the movie and you got that I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you.
Just because that happens to be the sequence of events that happens in the movie, doesn't mean you need to be so simple minded as to absorb the verbose plot as the message..
Wow. I don't typically reply to old replies, but I let my inbox slip while I was busy. This is some of the stupidest shit I've ever seen.
There's an awesome Jim Cavezel / Tim Ballard ep of the QAnon Anonymous podcast (anti-Q) that came out today about these folks. Too bad you need to pay to support to listen to the ep because it's on their premium feed. I wish you'd hear it.
Apologies for typos, I've been celebrating a life change with friends.
It is fine to watch an entertaining movie as long as you do not think fiction as fact? Take Chernobyl. It was nearly all fiction yet people bring it up all the time.
Didn't take it as fact, never take movies that I buy tickets for, at an entertainment facility, to be factual enough to base facets of my core ethos on for sure.
You probably should, because the statistics about sex trafficking and how it actually happens in the movie are inaccurate.
Who fucking cares? Literally every movie is a story meant to entertain. There's a decent moral and message regardless of the level if accuracy compared to the real life events purportedly used to base the movie from. Stop thinking what everyone else tells you to and be your own goddamn person.
Moral messages based off of faulty research aren't moral messages that should be taken even remotely seriously as they have no actual basis in reality.
Your own statement is a contradiction. We shouldn't care about the reality of the statistics because ..entertainment. Instead, we should ignore...reality...because...morality..specifically your version of morality...🤨
Sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too. Ultimately pretty much all pieces of art, media, narratives, etc. are, to varying degrees, political, and rarely ever purely entertainment. The very act of telling a story with a message indicates you have a point of something to tell!
And this movie is certainly no exception, especially considering its subject matter, which should be taken very seriously and treated with more care than the creators did, as they obviously were more concerned with depicting a story that reflected their personal views on the subject than reality, which honestly is insulting to those that actually experience the traumas of abuse.
You claim you want others to think for themselves rather than go with the crowd. But ignoring evidence and legitimate criticisms of the film and its message because it cloaks itself in righteousness that makes you feel validated and all cozy in your "it's moral, so ignore reality" bubble isn't thinking for yourself, it's drinking your own Kool Aid.
I think you may need to step back and ask yourself:
@Ubermeisters deleted his post where he basically just responded with the usual shit of calling anyone who doesn't agree with him a pedo. Dont know if my response is still visible, but thought it should be here. Here was my long ass winded response:
My problem is that the movie proclaimed itself to be bringing light to sex trafficking which everyone already knows and acknowledges as a problem, while dramatizing it to the point that it veered dangerously close to QAnon conspiracy and more importantly, didn't portray the problem of child sex trafficking accurately.
This is all side stepping the fact that "protecting the children" is a grift that has been used to demonize people of color and marginalized groups. All the while, I cant help but notice the right fails to bring up the fact that Nick Fuentes, who openly expressed his desires to have a child bride, has been wined and dined by Donald Fucking Trump, and yet that doesn't seem to come up when they talk about protecting the children. It's almost as if they'd rather ignore the obvious child predators/groomers that exist on their side of the aisle.
I'll be kind and not mention all the Catholic Priest bullshit you all tried to ignore a few decades ago because you were too busy trying to indoctrinate your kids to notice the child predators right under your fucking noses...oops.
Honestly I'm more upset at this than you ever could be, because while LGBTQ kids are being left to be preyed on by whomever crosses their path because their hate filled religious zealot parents abandon them on the streets, fuck faces like you call everyone else a pedo, and then also call those same kids pedos the second they become adults.
Meanwhile, people who actually have a moral fiber in their body are left knowing Who The Real Groomers Are.
Again my dude, perhaps you should be asking yourself:
This is a hilarious representation of how media illiterate conservatives are lmao
It’s fine to like the movie. Weird that you come into a topic about the real guy being a piece of shit and volunteer that you don’t care.
Weird, the guy with a savior complex turned out to be a narcissistic sex pest?
Who could have seen this coming?
Also, didn't one of the financiers of the movie get charged recently with kidnapping a child?
Yeah, but it was basically crowd-funded so there were a lot of “financiers.” Probably only like 30% of the contributors are sex perverts.
Basically an article reporting that another journalist reported and investigated this, but yeah this org is sketchy and universally criticized by orgs that do real work. Their methods are basically to go buy kids under the guise of rescuing them, but they're basically there creating a market demand for more kids to be captured. They have a bunch of issues with what happens to the kids after being "rescued" and in one instance had to let them go because they didn't have capacity to support the kids they rescued.
Let them go?
Yeah like they couldn't provide for the amount of kids they rescued so they just let them run free, or I dunno how these trafficking rings handle returns. I think it's still referenced on their public wikipedia page, there were some articles about it a few years ago back when a journalist first looked in to the org.
With the right, it’s. Always. Projection.
Terrible rewording of the headline.
I think this meant to say "ever happened." People are terrible at prose these days.
"It didn't never happen!"