The Effects of Media on Human Trafficking Policy and Perception

In today’s society, media has the power to reach billions of people, and to influence the way the public frames topics of interest.

Whether it is popular television news channels, the internet or newspapers, media sources inform the public on a daily basis of what is happening around the world. This information, however, does not exist without discourse; the media perspective, as with any opinion, cannot help but provide a lens through which the public receives information. That lens is worded, phrased, and discussed in ways that – intentionally or not – shed light on certain areas of an issue, while leaving others in the shadows.Consequently, this reporting lens affects the way the public thinks about a certain issue, and affects the subsequent decisions they make when addressing it. Human trafficking is not a new phenomenon; in fact, it has existed for thousands of years.

With the proliferation of media in modern culture, human trafficking has become a topic on the forefront of global migration issues. While distributing information in order to foster knowledge and awareness, the media nonetheless contains assumptions and biases – both intentional and unintentional – that affect the way human trafficking is viewed by both the public and the policy-makers.By using gendered lens, focusing on criminal causations, and propagating the idea that enforcement is the only solution to trafficking, the media portrays human trafficking in a very different light than true statistical evidence and academic research supports. The goal of this paper is to reveal how Canadian media portrays human trafficking to the public, and how their assumptions affect the policies and perceptions of this issue.

Methodology for this paper consisted of a collection of newspaper articles that were sourced online.I chose the top 3 English-language newspapers in Canada, in order to gather a Canadian demographic of readership: The Toronto Star (ranked number 1), the Globe and Mail (2) and the Vancouver Sun (6). This ranking was determined by the paper’s total circulation from 2007 to 2011, indicating the range of each newspaper’s readership, and demonstrating the reach of newspaper media to the public (Wikipedia, 2013). As there were no sources originally cited, I cross-referenced the top newspapers with the daily circulation statistics provided by Newspapers Canada, which supported the previous website’s conclusions (Newspapers Canada, 2013).Thus, the statement that the above newspapers are the most circulated in Canada is accurate.

Using the three newspapers, I searched the online databases using the key word ‘human trafficking’; taking the first ten articles that specifically addressed the topic of human trafficking from each search, I categorized them based on the story trigger, sources of information, actors, causes, and solutions. This allowed several dominant patterns within the sample media representation to clearly emerge.The first of three assumptions that the media repeatedly makes in regards to human trafficking is that of gendering. As demonstrated through the sample articles, and mentioned throughout scholarly sources, legislators and the media focus heavily on women, children, and the consequent gendered work like prostitution. By gendering the media’s approach towards human trafficking, other geographies are pushes aside in favour of more publicly-relatable areas of focus.Articles such as the Toronto Star’s “Younger and younger girls forced into prostitution because of economic crisis: Report” (Goldsmith, 2012) and the Globe and Mail’s “There are better ways to help foreign strippers than kicking them out of the country” (The Globe and Mail, 2012) exemplify the focus of media on gendered professions.

Media framing of human trafficking largely focuses on sex trafficking and prostitution, both rooted in female-gender roles and equality (Kempadoo, 2005).However, this assumptive gendering of the mainstream media ignores the fact that “there is real potential for abuse of both male and female migrants in a variety of areas of employment” (Mahdavi, 2011). In fact, the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking states that “trafficking victims are commonly found in such industries as ‘construction, manufacturing...

industrial, fishing... forestry, leather and tanning...

[and] livestock’” (Alvarez, 2012).However, these statistics are shadowed by gendered assumptions of the media that misrepresent the trafficking of particular genders by using “narrative of female powerlessness and childlike sexual vulnerability” to garner the attention of the public (Chapkis, 2003). Furthermore, Chapkis asserts that in using a discourse of gendered vulnerability, trafficked victims are thus portrayed by the media as vulnerable women that have been coerced into horrible conditions, and create a distinction between male migrants who ‘willingly’ violate border regulations in order to access personal gain.The very few articles that discuss male trafficking have the potential to show an equally tragic side to human trafficking detached from the gendered perspectives that are usually presented. For example, in the Globe and Mail, a single article represented the tragic deportation of a male trafficking-ring victim’s family, leaving him trapped in Canada (Morrow, 2012).Even in this article, the focus is less on male trafficking victims and virtual construction slavery than on the gendered and media-attractive issue of losing one’s family.

In short, these media assumptions have offered the public a “[view] of gendered migration that integrates national in an international division of social labour and a political economy of sex” (Piper, 2006), instead of inclusively reporting on both female and male trafficked victims and their roles in the international economy.Consequently, this has shaped the way that policy and politics address human trafficking. In a Vancouver Sun article, “the RCMP is creating a new Integrated Human Trafficking Team...

in an effort to combat crime networks trafficking in women and girls to work in the sex trade” (Quan, 2013), while the City of Toronto boycotts sharing advertisement space with escort advertisements that “may be used to market trafficked persons to prospective customers” (Rider, 2013).Even international policies are now gendering the address of human trafficking; the title of the “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime” specifically references women and children, removing focus from the male gender and the huge trafficking market that they comprise (United Nations, 2003).These initiatives, among a multitude of others, demonstrate the responses to gendered assumptions of human trafficking, while responses to male-specific cases of trafficking are not mentioned in any of the sample articles during this study. The media not only includes assumptive reporting on who is being trafficked; it also uses a narrow perspective to frame why they are being trafficked. Specifically, the majority of the sample articles for this study places criminal organizations and activity at the root of human trafficking.

As Farrell discusses, criminalization is a “fairly easy and popular policy solution” (Farrell, 2009), one that provides a simple and catchy reason that media can attribute to human trafficking. Media framing’s narrow repertoire limits the scope of the public to the causes of human trafficking, neglecting the fact that trafficking is “not only a criminal business, but also a complex phenomenon that reflects larger ocial inequalities dividing rich from the poor, male from female, the employed from the jobless” (Pajnik, 2010). Furthermore, human trafficking has been empirically tied to the fact that economic liberalization, military conflicts and political upheaval, along with persecution, violence, and human inequalities, create a demographic of individuals that are particularly vulnerable to trafficking networks (Gulati, 2011).As shown in articles such as “Accused human trafficker charged with obstruction” (The Canadian Press, 2012), “More arrests made in massive human-trafficking ring” (Morrow, More arrests made in massive human-trafficking ring, 2012), and “Romanian human smuggling ring busted” (Keung, 2012), the causes of human trafficking are attributed to criminal organizations, and not attributed to the true root cause of political, social, and economic instability within trafficked demographics.The discourse of criminalization demonstrates several core weaknesses in media portrayal.

This assumption lacks specificity (using terms such as ‘global human smuggling syndicates’ and ‘criminal enterprises’), lending an unsubstantiated criminal feel to the topic of human trafficking. As well, assuming that criminal activity is the leading cause of human trafficking operates to cast the nation to which the media is reporting as a “hunter of criminals”.This perpetuates public support for the political decisions of a nation -- ‘more consistent laws, more secure borders’ – and furthers the global separation and segregation of border control, consequently making human trafficking a puzzle-piece issue in which each nation attempts its own solution (Pajnik, 2010). Additionally, the media’s assumptive portrayal of victims as innocent, helpless victims that have been forced into trafficking by criminal networks prevents the identification of accurate trafficking victim demographics.

As stated by Farrell and Fayhe, “Many victims are arguably smuggled into the U. S. voluntarily to escape poverty or gender inequality and find themselves in situation where they are forced or coerced into [criminal activity] to pay off exorbitant smuggling debts” (Farrell, 2009). Finally, without an accurate understanding of the causes of human trafficking, victims forced by criminal organizations to partake in illegal activities may themselves appear as part of the criminal problem.

Because the portrayed criminalization of these individuals does not look at the complex phenomena behind their seemingly-illicit behaviour, law enforcement is more likely to ee them as criminals. If trafficking victims are identified as victims, there is an expectation that they must cooperate with law enforcement investigations; if they do not due to fear of retaliation of perpetrators, trauma, or fear of the police, “officials may be reluctant, or in the case of international victims, prohibited from providing victims with services and support” (Farrell, 2009). Law professor Sean Rehaag addresses this issue in the only article from the sampling that considers this alternative option: ““It is one thing to get tough on human smuggling by punishing smugglers.It is another thing entirely to punish refugees who have no way to get to a country like Canada except by using the services of a human smuggler” (Keung, 2012). This statement, however, is rare in the media and journalistic reporting, where mainstream assumptions are presented at the forefront of reporting.

These three issues of criminalizing the causes of trafficking through media framing is important to understand why human trafficking programs in North America have increasingly focused on “prosecuting criminals, disrupting criminal networks, and safeguarding U. S. borders” (Farrell, 2009).In criminalizing human trafficking causes, the issue of the individual and how they became subjected to trafficking in the first place is overlooked; the media removes geopolitical implications from the cause of human trafficking, while simultaneously supporting the national geographic boundaries by implying the need for stricter border control and enforcement. Following the assumptions made by media on the causes of human trafficking, a reporting trend regarding the solution to human trafficking becomes apparent as well.The popular discourse within the media focuses on suggesting increased resources for law enforcement, enhancing legal measures, and assistance for the ‘innocent’ victims.

Specifically, “common complaints among those in the anti-trafficking community [report that] enforcement should be more vigorous” (Gulati, 2011). The media portrayal of enforcement as a central solution to human trafficking is prevalent within media reporting; however, there is also a conspicuous lack of suggesting how exactly this enforcement would be executed.Media articles discussed how “enforcement should be more evenly meted out” between victims and perpetrators (Barret, 2013), how enforcement should “include more aid to local communities to deal with human trafficking, and more research and possible legislation to address the crime” (The Canadian Press, 2013), and the implementation of enforcement methods such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Integrated Market Enforcement Team (Quan, 2013). All of these reference the idea of enforcement, but remain vague and unspecific.Questions remain unanswered in regards to the types of enforcement and the regulations of these enforcement protocols, and carry a discourse that support the national enforcement policies by not stating any other alternative options.

As Gulati discusses, one can “see anti-trafficking efforts as a form of cultural imperialism”, in which the unspoken vagueness of the word ‘enforcement’ implies the national pre-existing idea of illegal migration and increased border control and securitization (Gulati, 2011).In referring only to enforcement, or not referring to a solution at all, the media is perpetuating the idea that human trafficking is something to be dealt with on a mono-national scale, where individual border control can help stop the problem. In actuality, this only closes the eyes of a nation to a problem that will continue globally whether or not enforcement is increased at a national level, and suggests that a globally-involved solution is not a viable option.As Zimmerman notes, no one could plausibly claim to be “for” human trafficking (Zimmerman, 2011). However, the concern for solving this issue is shaped by media portrayal of carceral paradigms of the social justice system that already exist. This shows a pre-existing commitment to and credulity in the existing national systems of enforcement, instead of questioning their credibility in the first place (Bernstein, 2010).

Enforcement is defined by the policy responses to human trafficking; as discussed by scholars, “published estimates of human trafficking victims and the actual cases of human trafficking discovered by government officials may be more reflective of changing definitions of human trafficking and their associated policy responses” (Farrell, 2009). Consequently, media articles that report on (for example) the criminal prostitution of trafficked individuals automatically see this as a criminalized activity, not a coerced one, due to enforcement and reining political discourse.Many times, the focus on law enforcement is a result of blame being placed on enforcement’s failure to stop the criminals associated with human trafficking, and does not take into account the scale of the problem itself. Instead of questioning why, a natural media and public response is to demand more ‘aggressive’ enforcement. This leads to a nation-based enforcement ideal that formulates its statistics on the amount of trafficking crimes that were stopped, instead of looking at the global statistics and attempting to incorporate them into national policy making (Finckenauer, 2005).