Sex Trafficking and the Media : Perspectives from Thailand and the United States

This book explores how sex trafficking has been reported in the media. It focuses on Thailand and the United States, showing how there are great similarities between the two countries in the way the issue is misrepresented. The book discusses sex trafficking as a human rights abuse, explores how the reporting of the phenomenon is framed by law enforcement agencies, rather than by the victims, and explains why journalists have a difficult relationship with both victims and law enforcers. The book highlights the often disparaging portrayal of victims, and puts forward suggestions as to how a fuller and more accurate picture of sex trafficking might be achieved.

This book explores how sex trafficking has been reported in the media. The book is set in the context of reportage of this human rights abuse in two varying political landscapes – the United States being a developed democracy and Thailand experiencing continued political turmoil including a May 2014 coup d’état and an accompanying crackdown on free expression by the ruling military junta. In doing so, the book shows how there are great similarities between the two countries in the way the issue is misrepresented. Drawing on content analysis of news coverage in the United States and Thailand as well as interviews with journalists, anti-trafficking advocates, survivors of sex trafficking and consensual sex workers, this book illuminates reasons why coverage is framed in the way(s) that it is, how anti-trafficking advocates can act as media advocates to push coverage in new directions, and how journalistic functions are similar and different in the two countries.