Human trafficking, or HT, according to the Polaris Project, is the business of stealing a person’s freedom for profit. It is a multi-billion-dollar criminal industry denying freedom to at least 24.9 million people worldwide. Although the United States is a Tier 1 nation due to efforts to combat trafficking (U.S. Department of State, 2017, p. 25), it leads globally as a major source, destination and transit country, with around one third of the world’s HT profits stemming from it alone (Bogle, 2015). It holds the title of second highest destination in the world for trafficked females
(BCAT, 2017), although 83 percent of victims in confirmed U.S. sex trafficking cases are U.S. citizens (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011). HT is the fastest growing crime in the U.S., on track to soon surpass drugs as the number one crime.
Since most people use the media to understand social problems such as trafficking (Johnston, Friedman, & Sobel, 2015; Berns, 2004), the media can influence public discourse about the topic, as well as encourage action on the part of the public including policy makers (Hammarberg, 2012; Shah & Thornton, 2004). News media also can serve to raise HT awareness and improve the responses of law enforcement officers and agencies to the problem (Mapp et al., 2016; Wilson & Dalton, 2008), thereby aiding victims. This is critical, especially since little-to-no research has been published on HT victim news coverage, inspiring scholars’ call for it (Johnston, Friedman & Shafer, 2014; Sobel, 2014).
While Maryland is not a top three U.S. HT state despite three major airports, an inexpensive/extensive East Coast transportation system, large sporting events, etc., it is attractive to traffickers and, disturbingly, unforgiving for trafficking victims: “Maryland ranks dead last in easing the way for [HT] survivors” (Rentz, 2019, emphasis added). Therefore, this study aims to qualitatively investigate through a merged framing theory and feminist-ethics-of-care perspective how HT victims have been portrayed over the past decade in 70 sampled articles from two of Maryland’s top three dailies, The Baltimore Sun and the Capital Gazette.
The central logic of framing is the construction of symbolic representations that allows the frame to deliver to the receiver of the frame an understanding of issues. Gitlin (1980) viewed frames as “persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by which symbol-handlers routinely organize discourse…” (p. 7). A feminist-ethics-of-care perspective seeks for an ethic of resistance to the injustices inherent in patriarchy that can prevail in journalistic storytelling (Gilligan, 2011).
Studying HT victim news coverage particularly from this angle is significant because of its implications for the news industry to decrease gendered reporting; for lawmakers and law enforcers to thwart trafficking; and, primarily, for (potential) victims, to decrease entry and increase escape plus recovery. A two-newspaper analysis should cut through news normalization and routinization that can occur through press practices (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996; Author, 2008), pointing to how (non-gendered) journalism can be a force for human rights advocacy for subjugated groups, primarily female HT victims.