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In early August 2017, articles appeared on unreliable web sites reporting that two of the most popular entertainers in pop music, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, had made public statements asserting that the music industry is run by pedophiles. (Note: We recognize that pedophilia, which is defined as a sexual attraction to children, is not the same as child sexual abuse, although the web sites under discussion do not observe that distinction.) A YourNewsWire story written by Dmitry Baxter (one of the promulgators of the thoroughly discredited Pizzagate conspiracy theory claiming in 2016 that Hillary Clinton and other Washington elites ran a pedophile ring out of a pizza restaurant in the nation's capitol) intimated that the reason Bieber canceled the last leg of his 2017 world tour in July was his realization that pedophilia is rampant in the entertainment business: One day later, a similar article about Katy Perry was posted on the web site Neon Nettle (another hardcore purveyor of Pizzagate rumors, not to mention articles falsely attributing statements about show business pedophilia to actor Brad Pitt and implying connections between the deaths of alt-rockers Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington and music industry child abusers): The article goes on to paint a picture virtually identical to that in the YourNewsWire article of industry pedophiles making up an exclusive club: Despite the fact that both stories include elements of truth to shore up their credibility — Justin Bieber did cancel part of his 2017 tour, for example, and Katy Perry did say in a live-streamed therapy session that she doesn't want to be Katy Perry anymore (i.e., in the sense of having to live up to fans' expectations) — in neither case are the statements attributed to them about pedophilia sufficiently sourced or corroborated to earn readers' credence. No such statements by Bieber and Perry have been quoted (or even mentioned) by any mainstream news outlets. On the contrary, these statements are lurid fabrications designed either to garner social media likes and shares (and advertising dollars), or spread disinformation intended to harm the reputations of so-called Hollywood elites (a favorite political target of both YourNewsWire and Neon Nettle), or both. Unfortunately, by disseminating these false stories, the web sites dilute and lend confusion to the impact of actual claims of industry pedophilia made by the likes of former child actors Corey Feldman and Elijah Wood, who have separately gone on record saying the extent to which the sexual abuse of minors occurs in Hollywood is underreported. Worse, child abuse is one of those emotion-laden topics that can lead to violence, so there's no room for false reporting. One would hope that lessons were learned from the Pizzagate debacle, which resulted in a credulous fake news reader firing an AR-15 rifle inside Washington DC's Comet Ping Pong, a family restaurant; the shooter said he expected to rescue child sex slaves from a pedophile ring that does not exist, which was purportedly run out of the restaurant's basement, which also does not exist. We reached out to representatives of Justin Bieber and Kate Perry for comment, but did not hear back before publication time.
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