Remember Miami-teen Angie Varona? She was the girl who unwittingly became an internet sex symbol at the age of 14 after her Photobucket account was hacked and her scantily clad, though not explicit, photos made the rounds on some of the seedier parts of the internet.
Well, ABC News' Nightline interviewed her this week. They added nothing new to the story, aside from an interview with Varona and her parents, but they decided it would be a good idea to broadcast images of Varona's body, including a few taken while she was a child wearing little more than a thong, along with the report.
Here's the clip, and yes, notice that ABC News even uses one of the pictures as the placeholder image:
The report starts out innocently enough. Nightline shows carefully cropped photos of Angie's face and images of her Google image search result page featuring some of the less shocking photos (a similar tactic we took to illustrate the story when we wrote about it). Then things get graphic.
"So here they are, a few photographs of a 14-year-old girlfriend in bra and panties taken for her first boyfriend," says anchor Terry Moran.
Taken out of context it would sound creepy. Even in context it's still creepy. Nightline then shows dozens of Varona's more scandalous photos during the rest of the package, including photos of her unblurred, barely covered breasts and pictures of her wearing just a thong. All of these pictures were taken when she was a child, mind you.
These pictures are then inter-cut with video of Varona crying while being interviewed about how she wishes no one had ever seen these pictures. Moran reports on how Angie has received threats, and men have written rape fantasies about the teen. Did it occur to anyone that broadcasting these on one the most watched networks in America could only encourage more of that?
Way to be a creep, Terry Moran.
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