Human Trafficker Depictions: Portrayals of Perpetrators
in Documentary Film and Newspaper Articles
Kara Russell
Dr. Ted Gournelos
COM313: Mass Media and Society
Word Count: 3,150
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Abstract
Human trafficking documentaries and films are emphasize victim ensnared into
the world of forced sexual labor, and perpetrators, the people that coerced the victim into
participating in such acts, sometimes are hidden or minimized as if “we know” who they
are and understand their motivations. The framing of the perpetrators strongly influence
our understanding of the issue, yet dominant media representations lead us to create
schemas of traffickers that lead to misconceptions of the scope and characteristics of the
issue. In this paper I will discuss my textual analysis of a primetime PBS documentary
and a discourse analysis of 20 newspaper articles from 1 national and 2 regional sources.
My aim is to give voice to the silences surrounding perpetrator motives, for an
understanding of the underlying systematic issues that lead to the want or need to exploit
others will contribute to more efficient legislation to make trafficking a crime not worth
the consequence.
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Introduction
We are continually exposed to many types of media- news stories, documentaries,
movies, photographs and social media campaigns- that document and shape our
understanding of social issues. Over the past 15 years, human trafficking has increasingly
become a topic of public discourse, specifically among the criminal justice, humanitarian,
and entertainment sectors. However, the focus of such discourse is often centered on the
victims/survivors of the crime, largely ignoring another major player- the trafficker. The
absence of perpetrators in public discussion almost suggests that they are too “obvious,”
too “knowable” to bother explaining or characterizing except as “evil”. Though a textual
analysis of a primetime Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentary film and a
discourse analysis of 20 national and regional newspaper articles, I argue that an overall
sensationalized representation perspective rooted in criminality framing and the
depersonalization of perpetrators contribute to a silence that inhibit passive audience’s
construction of who the perpetrators are as people, their motives, and, subsequently, an
all-encompassing understanding of the crime.
Literature Review
While there has been much analysis regarding media depictions of
victims/survivors (e.g. Alvarez and Alessi 2012; Johnston, Friedman & Shafer 2012;
Schaeffer-Grabiel 2010), there is limited scholarly research that examines how
traffickers, the perpetrators, are portrayed. Furthermore, there is virtually no research that
explores passive audiences’ perceptions of these criminals. Generally, local coverage of
crime is scripted to depict perpetrators as violent and focuses on a particular suspect,
visually giving a particular face to the crime “news script” (Gilliam and Invengar 2000,
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560). This narrative tends to begin with the statement that a crime has occurred, followed
by bystander or witness testimony and the apprehension of the suspect by the police.
Perpetrator Portrayals in Documentary
Previous textual analysis of human trafficking films and documentaries (mostly
on sex trafficking) claim that media reflects traffickers as clearly and easily understoodthat is, traffickers are categorized into a specific representations, usually that they are
foreign men of color that imprison and control women until a heroic rescuer, most often a
White male with an official law enforcement badge, saves the day (Baker 2014, 209). At
best, documentaries examine root causes of the issue and note that victims and traffickers
do not fit neatly into a single definition or cause; however, there is still a theme of racial
or Western dominance. The trafficker almost always is said to be violent- either
physically against the victim or by threatening the victim’s family and loved ones (216).
In the literature, these representations are deemed misconceptions by pointing out that
uncovered trafficking networks “complicate the vision of solo traffickers” and that “dual
gendering of human trafficking contrasts with the image of predatory male stranger
common in anti-trafficking media” (Warren 2012, 114).
Perpetrator Portrayals in Newspaper
Spikes of human trafficking newspaper coverage correspond to international and
federal reports and legislation (Johnston et al. 2012). Originally framed as an
international social problem rooted in a human rights perspective, human trafficking,
“was increasingly defined as a crime problem, necessitating criminal justice system
responses” with a stronger focus on national security post 9/11 (Farrell & Fahy 2009,
618). Articles tend to focus almost exclusively on sexual exploitation (with the exception
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of labor trafficking when illegal immigration is involved) and discussion of solutions is
slim to none (Gulati 2010; Johnston et. al. 2012). Johnston et al (2012) argues that the
narrative remains consistent- a woman, depicted as someone to be ‘saved’ is rescued by a
white, heroic man. With the exception of investigative journalism, stories are
predominantly victim testimony with advocates being the “least heard from sources”
framed as an episodic crime. Furthermore, non-politically focused articles are strongly
lacking discussion pertaining to solutions and much needed remedies (Johnston et al.
2012; Gulati 2010).
Method
To best examine depictions of perpetrators in the media, I performed a multimethod analysis: A textual analysis of A Path Appears: Human Trafficking, Episode 1
(2015), a 1:26:00 minute PBS documentary episode and a discourse analysis of 20
newspaper articles, from one national and two regional sources.
Method 1: Textual Analysis
The textual analysis of A Path Appears (2015), directed and hosted by the two
time Pulitzer Price winning New York Times journalist and human rights activist
Nicholas Kristof, first aired on January 27, 2015 at 8 PM as part of the PBS mini-series
spinning off Kristof’s 2014 book of the same title. I coded 25 scenes for 3 themes: direct
trafficker portrayal1, victim speaking of their trafficker and expert testimony on
perpetrators. Under each theme I noted the time, type of shot (close-up, telephoto or
panning), camera angle (back, side or face of subject) and noise (diegetic or
Scenes including Johns are added to this category due to a common belief that
those that purchase the services of a trafficked person are perpetrators.
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extradiegetic). Each clip included a qualitative analysis of the content of the
accompanying narrative.
Method 2: Discourse Analysis
My sample of 20 articles, within the date range of January 1, 2015 to March 22,
20152 , were obtained from the search term “human trafficking” included on the New
York Times, L.A. Times and Orlando Sentinel websites. The articles were selected with
an interest for picking a variety of themes from each source (i.e. Limited picking an
article with the intention as a follow up piece from a previous storyline). The sample was
coded for 8 themes- criminality, politics, national security, humanitarian, informative,
labor focused, sex focused and minor focused- and ranked on a scale from 0 to 3, 0 being
no elements of the theme in the article to 3 being the focus of the article. The data was
analyzed quantitatively; the total and two different means (among the total articles and
for articles containing a coded value above 0) were collected for each theme.
Results
Method 1: Textual Analysis
Perpetrator Portrayals
The findings among each coded category were strikingly consistent; 6 out of the 8
trafficker portrayals scenes I analyzed were composed of the perpetrator’s back facing the
camera, a panning motion and extradiegetic sound from expert voiceover- in a narrative
centered around legal ramifications. For instance, at 0:01:50, the camera focuses on a
White male’s hands in handcuffs, then pans away to show the perpetrator’s back walking
away, led by a police officer. Expert testimony serves as extradiegetic sound in the
This narrow date range was selected due to evolving discussions of human
trafficking inspired by legislation, annual country reports and media storylines
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background, speaking on “focusing attention on the Johns” and “making (the John’s)
lives miserable”. It is important to note that half of the scenes analyzed feature a John as
the perpetrator and further gave the connotation of violence (e.g. A scene at 1:08:32
stating that a John arrested in the sting had a pistol in his car and a “violent criminal
history”).
Two scenes during an undercover law enforcement sting give a voice to the Johns.
The first, beginning at 1:06:36, features a blurred John’s face angled towards the camera,
with the diegetic sound of this voice explaining why he is in that situation: “[I only come
here] when my back feels bad, when it hurts, especially in the cold weather.
Well…chiropractors are expensive. [This is] just a massage”. The second, a scene
beginning at 1:07:07, flows from an expert testimony emphasizing that traffickers have
no demographic characteristics. When the law enforcement-booking agent asks for the
perpetrator’s highest level of education, he states “M.D”. Even then, however, the
dialogue was brief and the perpetrator was interrupted by the police. Although two Johns
were given voices, Kristof and law enforcement experts compromise a personalized view
of the perpetrator statements by grouping the men arrested into a category of a
sensationalized representation of a trafficking- an “insane” male criminal (1:02:34).
While Kristof’s statement acknowledges that the Johns arrested included, “ all kids of
customers…it was pretty much a broad range of people…” and, at 1:06:16, he is quick to
acknowledge a similarity: “they all insisted this was the first time they had paid for sex”.
Furthermore, law enforcement expert testimony placed in between the clips of Johns’
voices further group perpetrators together: “most of the time [the perpetrator does] feel
terrible. They feel terrible because they got caught” (1:07:07).
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Victim and Expert Testimony
The 13 analyzed scenes in which a victim (always female) spoke of her trafficker
(which included a grandfather, a mother, a father, a step-father and an unrelated pimp that
sexually exploited the women) are mostly consistent. The victim’s face, from a side
angle, is featured as she tells her story to Kristof or another featured celebrity, The
victim’s voice is primarily diegetic sound, with 2 scenes featuring a victim’s story as
extradietgic sound with photos of the victim as a child or mug shots on the screen as broll. The experts were filmed one at a time, directly facing the camera with a close-up of
their well-lit faces against a black backdrop. When the expert is shown (however, not for
more than 5 seconds) the sound is diegetic, transitioning to an extradiegetic sound as
scenes of American cities in which the episode was filmed. The scenes are not directly
representational, but instead reflect a specific tone to frame the discussion and construct a
symbolic portrayal of the crime.
The topics discussed center around misconceptions of the crime’s demographics
and how traffickers recruit and retain victims. Despite acknowledging that the term “sex
trafficking” has specific connotations in our society (i.e. foreign women being brought to
another country) and de-bunking definitional misconceptions of the crime itself, the
narratives use wording that insinuate traffickers operate below the radar of law
enforcement and prey on children. The implications of these statements further contribute
to a silence pertaining the perpetrators themselves, as testimony would hint that they are
all the same breed.
Method 2: Discourse Analysis
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Out of the 8 coded themes, 4 elements strongly dominate the data in terms of total
ranking. Criminality (31), Political (27), Sex Focused (29) and Minor Focused (24)
themes are the most prominent compared to National Security (1), Humanitarian (15),
Informative (10) and Labor Focused (9) themes. Each of the prominent themes
(criminality, political and sex and minor-focused) were further analyzed in terms of mean
and other themes that were present within the sub-sample.
11 of the articles were coded for criminality, with over half coded as this theme
being the main focus of the article. The mean score out of the total articles was a 1.43,
and 2.3 among the articles with coded elements over 0. Additionally, these articles also
contained the themes of a sex focus (38%), minor focus (24%) and political elements
(19%). A majority of the articles featured the perpetrator (male, except for one article),
sexually abusing underage women (e.g. 8 solely focused on sex trafficking and 5
specifically among minors). In these articles, legal ramifications for the perpetrators are
clearly outlined.
Among the political element, the average mean for all articles (2.57) is slightly
higher than the mean for the coded articles (2.07). While the criminal justice system is
mentioned (criminality elements in 7%), a humanitarian (20%) tone is adopted by
discussing policymaker’s dissatisfaction with current laws (political; 20%) and an
informative (25%) tone is present pertaining to the discussion of root causes. In fact, all
articles coded for informative elements were also coded for political.
The sex and minor focuses are combined into the category of a sensationalized
media representation. 11 of the total articles were coded for a sex-focused theme (2.76
overall and 2.63 within the coded values over 0) and 10 for minor-focused (2.28 overall
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and 2.4 coded). Elements of criminality constitute 39% of the sex-focused sample
(followed by 23% political, 23% informative, and 17% informative). The minor focused
articles include prominent elements of criminality (41%), politics (25%) and 17% among
humanitarian and informative.
Discussion
Overall, the textual and discourse analyses provide framework to argue that the
media thrives on “marginalized alternative views” of trafficking, steading reinforcing the
dominant view- trafficking crime because it is illegal to exploit another person, not
because of moral or humanitarian implications (Gulati, 2010, 367). This multi-method
analysis extracts themes of criminality, voyeurism and sensationalism as main
components of the media’s framing of the crime, specifically the construction of the
perpetrators.
The way that traffickers are portrayed in both samples clearly reflects a dominant
criminality discourse- that is, our vision of justice can be best pictured with a handcuffed
perpetrator in the custody of the police (Gulati 2010). In the documentary, the framing of
a trafficker in handcuffs is seemingly hinting at the subject’s deviance and guilt and the
lack of visualization of the perpetrator’s face suggests shame (and, perhaps, potential
universality). The victim and experts narratives pertaining to typical characteristics of a
trafficker acknowledged female perpetrators (e.g. a victim was first sexually exploited by
her mother’s encouragement to perform sexual acts on the victim’s step-father), but no
women in the role of a perpetrator were shown visually. Newspaper articles strongly
featured detailed accounts of a the crime accompanied by a detail of past convictions (e.g.
rape, sexual battery, drug possession). This creates a sense of urgency, used to legitimize
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the crime within the community and increase public pressure, forcing officials to respond
(Farrell & Fahy 2009). . The testimonies surrounding the John’s limited, diegetic voice in
the documentary and absence of voice in newspaper articles contribute the construction
of perpetrators becoming depersonalized symbols of crime and the role of the State in
combatting/punishing crime, decontextualizing the causes and realities of human
trafficking in favor of the spectacle of punishment (Foucault 1977).
The emotionally appealing narratives interpellate the viewer by
hyperpersonalizing the victim in the documentary, while still contained within the
framework of an impersonal flâneur rather than engaging the victims as people with
agency. Voyeurism, relating to the spectacle of suffering creates “a distance of the
visceral spectacle of suffering or “easily won empathy with ‘people like us’” that “does
not help change the political inequalities that perpetrate suffering (Arthurs 2009). In the
documentary film, the panning of the camera inspires a feeling of monitoring the
perpetrator’s movement- a voyeuristic perspective- that gives the connotation of a
powerful position within the gaze, for the perpetrator cannot return it if his back is turned.
The discourse analysis further reflects themes of voyeurism though wording such as
“targeting” and “preying”. For example, an Orlando Sentinel article titled “Convicted of
human trafficking, sex offender sentenced to life in prison”, describes the perpetrator, a
44 year old Black male, as “preying” on homeless or drug addicted women (Weiner
2015). “Preying” signifies the perpetrator’s voyeurism by means of watching his
unpresuming victim, however, we, the reader of this article are made voyeurs by the
newspaper source though the inclusion of a mug shot. Online mug shots, matters of
public record, are “tied not to the function of identifying an arrestee, but to an invitation
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for a viewer to participate in symbiotic ritual of humiliation” (Langeson 2014). We are
able to construct a different view of ourselves by examining a mug shot, making
judgments such as “he is bad, whereas I would not traffic another, therefore I am not”,
however, we are not learning more about ourselves, not the perpetrator.
Arthurs (2009) argues that a voyeuristic aesthetic commonly used in media
reporting and, “panders a voyeuristic enjoyment of sexual coercion” (310). In fact, such
approaches are common in media portrayals of the human trafficking, specifically in
campaigns to “seek impact on the sense though graphic imagery to provoke” (Choulikari
2006, 149 as cited in Arthurs 2012). A late 1990’s International Organization for
Migration campaign display women to be passive objects, with faces shielded from our
gaze. The concepts of female vulnerability and sexuality, represented by scantily clothed
doll-like women, were carefully constructed among the grainy black and white images.
The spacing of the photographs and text allows the spectator to pause and reflect on
captions such as “The return home wont be easy. Are you sure you know what’s waiting
for you?” paired with an image of a woman, clad in high heels and lace undergarments,
disappearing behind a door. Overall, the campaign depicts women as something to be
saved from men that are willing to objectify and exploit them, further framing the
perpetrator to be male and exploit a woman sexually.
Both the documentary and discourse analysis included labor trafficking in
definitions and discussions of human trafficking, yet the documentary did not visually
depict, nor dwell, on this type of trafficking. In terms of the discourse analysis, only one
of the articles focused on labor trafficking offenders, but even then, it had strong themes
of illegal immigration. While the documentary and newspaper articles either explicitly
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mentioned, or alluded to by the absence of gendered terms, the possibility of a male
victim, no such victim was present. The documentary featured all women victims and if
the newspaper articles mentioned a gender, the victim was a woman and/or (unspecified
gender) child. Popular culture does not yet accept women to be capable of rape, as
demonstrated by viral social movements targeting men and gendered language when
speaking of a rape perpetrator. Therefore, if trafficking is depicted as sexual exploitation,
research identifying the extent to which passive audiences will construct perpetrators
solely as males, would be extremely insightful.
Despite all of the victims shown as women and perpetrators depicted as men,
there is a more general shift in traffickers becoming genderless and can be best seen
when examining the evolution of International Organization for Migration’s European
Campaigns from the early 1990s-2008 (Andrijasevic 2007, Andrijasevic and Anderson
2009, Nieuwenhuys and Pecoud 2007, Schtral 2010). The traditional portrayal of
traffickers as visibly male has transitioned into “depersonalized images in order to denote
traffickers as an overarching and less immediately recognizable network” (Andrijasevic,
2007, 166) paired with text that dispels rumors, such as “Traffickers always look like
criminals, you can recognize them by appearance”. The complementary message on the
campaign reads, “This is not true. You can meet various traffickers. Some will not
resemble criminals at all”.
It is important to recognize the ways in which our media depicts what a criminal
“resembles”. The outlined themes all contribute to a silence- the perpetrators (and to a
lesser extent the victims/survivors) remain without a voice and construct our view of who
they are as people, as well as the issue of human trafficking in general. Without this
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voice, we are unable to understand what drives someone to traffic (or be complicit in the
trafficking of) another human being. The discourse surrounding human trafficking is
extremely important, for it both influences, and in turn, reinforces Washington’s
consensus on anti-trafficking legislation (Gulati 2010 & Johnston et al. 2012). A deeper
understanding of the perpetrator and the underlying systematic issues that lead to the
want or need to exploit others will contribute to more efficient legislation that makes, in
the trafficker’s eyes, the crime of human trafficking not worth the consequence.
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