For 2 Years, PSA Told How to Hide Child Porn

An oldies country music radio station serving a rural Arizona area that aired a public service announcement for two years telling people how to hide potential evidence in child pornography cases has stopped doing so after advertisers received threats, the station's owner says. Paul Lotsof, owner of KAVV-FM in Benson, tells the AP that he does not like child pornography but created the announcement because he thinks Arizona's 10-year minimum sentence for each image of child porn is too harsh and costly for taxpayers. "Nobody put me up to it, and nobody paid," he says. "My feeling is that these people don't deserve life in prison just because they have pictures of naked juveniles."

But recent public comment about the announcement was "99.9%" negative and some radio station advertisers received threats, Lotsof says. The announcement, protected under the First Amendment, described Arizona's tough penalties for possession of child pornography and then provided advice on how to avoid convictions. "If you have such material, you can save yourselves and your family a ton of grief and save the taxpayers a lot of money," he explains, going on to offer advice related to hard drives. A local sheriff called it "disgusting and unacceptable" and encouraging "evil behavior." (More Arizona stories.)