The Business Ethics Blog

Here’s the “other shoe dropping.”

Yesterday I posted about exploitative videos, including the Girls Gone Wild Series. I felt a little conflicted about that posting. On one hand, it was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel: you don’t need a philosophy professor to tell you that selling videos of drunking co-eds flashing the camera is not exactly the height of virtuous business. On the other hand, it’s not like they’re snuff videos or anything.

A little more digging around on the internet proved disturbing. I found two stories from reputable sources, which together suggest that the dude behind Girls Gone Wild — Joe Francis — is more than just a low-level creep.

Dispatches From Girls Gone Wild, by Ariel Levy for Slate magazine.
‘Baby, Give Me a Kiss’, by Claire Hoffman for the L.A. Times’ West magazine.

(See especially Hoffman’s piece, which gives a first-hand account of an assault, and a second-hand account of a rape.)