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This is unethical beyond being poor journalism.

The New York Times recently released a heavily promoted (by the New York Times itself) piece which amounts to an emotional attack on the news outlets RT and Sputnik.

Russia Feed recently explained that on pure journalistic terms, the New York Times (NYT) piece amount to little more than a very long winded way of the the NYT saying 'RT and Sputnik have a different editorial line to us and a more successful, more modern business model and therefore, they are wicked, rather than just a different kind of news source with a different editorial line'.

But what is even more sinister, is that the NYT exploited the actual rape of a child in order to promote a vendetta against RT and Sputnik. Again, one does not have to like RT or Sputnik to understand that exploiting the rape of a 13 year old girl is totally unethical, but this is what the NYT has done.

The story cited by the NYT is the rape case of a 13 year old German girl of Russian ethnicity who was raped in 2016.

Initially, it was reported that the victim was held and raped by multiple men fitting the description of 'refugees'. According to a German court, a man was sentenced after admitting to an unlawful carnal act (aka statutory rape) upon a child. The man who was 24 at the time of conviction, also admitted filming the criminal act. Videoing a carnal act involving a child, means that the rapist also produced child pornography.

The New York Times article however does not explain this. Instead, the article deceptively states,
"She had left home, it turned out, because she had gotten in trouble at school. Afraid of how her parents would react, she went to stay with a 19-year-old male friend".
First of all, the man sentenced by a German court was 24 at the age of sentencing. This meant that he could have been no younger than 22 at the time of the unlawful carnal act. Under German law, it is illegal for any adult to have a carnal relationship, irrespective of circumstance, with a child under the age of 18. It is sometimes legal for a person under the age of 21 to have a carnal relationship with a child of 14 years of age or older, but only if no physical or psychological abuse is involved. In any case, as the victim was 13 at the time and the perpetrator was over the age of 21. German law therefore defines the act as straightforward rape.

Most laws throughout the world, also define what happened to the victim as a criminal act of rape including Russian law, the law of all 50 States of the USA and Turkey. As the man involved was said to have a Turkic name by the German court, it becomes necessary to consider Turkish law as well, under which the man would also be defined as the rapist of a child. This helps one understand why the girl said that the rapist had a 'southern appearance' which in Germany is a term used to describe someone who does not appear to be Caucasian.

When it comes to understanding the situation on a purely logical level. The wisdom of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov must necessarily come into play. When asked about the incident, Lavrov stated that it is beyond comprehension that a 13 year old girl disappeared for such a long period of time voluntarily.

Sergey Lavrov is correct. The very reason so-called statutory rape laws exist is to protect vulnerable children from exploitation, in all its many guises. While the New York Times used the incident to try and sell newspapers and dwindling online subscriptions, a young girl was exploited, raped and possibly psychologically damaged for life and the NYT added insult to injury by publishing a fake news factoid about the age of the rapist in an attempt to lessen the seriousness of the vile act.

The only lesson to take from such a case is that societies need to do more to protect the young from harm.

But for the hacks at the New York TImes, the lesson is that RT and Sputnik were behaving badly for reporting a story which even the Russian and German Foreign Ministries commented on.

This is not just bad journalism on the part of the New York Times, it is purely unethical. There are many ways to say that one likes or dislikes fellow news organisations. Exploiting child rape and coming to the defense of a pedophile, are not acceptable options.