To start understanding how the mainstream media protects the pornographers, consider this testimony that actor and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich made about Pornography and Hollywood at the Los Angeles County Commission for Women in 1985:
"In the name of freedom of speech, a lot of people are being silenced in Los Angeles. In the name of sexual freedom, a lot of people are being sexually enslaved and abused. Most of them are women. Both those in pornography and those in legitimate entertainment are included. Since Dorothy [Stratten] was killed, a lot of women have written to me or told me what Playboy has done to them [Stratten, who appeared in Playboy, was murdered by her pimp husband]. Even if they manage to avoid personal liaison within the sex factories, they spend the rest of their lives trying to forget it, or live it down, or cover it up, or get away from it. Other young women have been tricked, pressured, blackmailed into pornography, and they have trouble, there's trouble getting them out. Actresses who have consented to some nudity in legitimate films, pictures of this have been put into pornography without their consent. Cybill Shepherd had that happen to her when, from a picture we did together -- and believe me, if I had that scene to do over again, we'd just as soon not do it naked, because it wasn't really necessary.
There are lucky ones who won lawsuits. They could afford lawsuits, but didn't repair what happened to them. Since my last testimony, I've been in touch with many people in the entertainment field... They, along with the people that I'm mentioning, the silent people, they're all afraid to come down here and tell you exactly about their experiences... Women who were in pornography are afraid to speak out because it will call attention to their past, which will destroy the margin of legitimacy that they have been able to establish for themselves. These women live in fear of exposure, and there are a lot of them.
The pornographers and their supporters are so powerful, and the connection between the pornography industry and the legitimate entertainment industry is so intimate, that directors and producers and writers and creative people of all kinds do not feel able to take a stand against pornography because they're going to be blackmailed by legitimate studios, distribution houses, etc. Some say, "Just wait till I get this distributed, then I'll be free to go down and tell you what I know," or "I'm waiting to sell a TV show..." The real story is that people are intimidated out of speaking by those in power over their lives - in this case, powerful corporations that control expression in this country, and sexual so-called expression is, first of all, very big business.
When feminists say that pornography is not speech, it is silence, they are speaking not only for all women, but for those in the entertainment industry as well, the ones that are silenced out of coming down here to tell you, this afternoon, that they want the pornographers stopped."
-- Testimony of Peter Bogdanovich, at the Los Angeles Public Hearing, April 22, 1985 (Source: In Harm's Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings; 1997).