Resources

Our ever-expanding range of resources for reporting on sex trafficking, including:

1. Tip Sheets: Useful tips for covering sex trafficking including best practices for interviewing survivors and other sources, finding and/or generating reliable data, working with NGOs, and more.
2.  Data: Not yet a library, but the first of many helpful data sets for thinking about the magnitude of trafficking, the issues with which trafficking overlaps, and for localizing your reporting. To get you started, we’ve provided a table of laws related to trafficking, sortable by state, statute, classification and with links to the original legislation.
3. Research Notes: Here you’ll find abstracts or short essays about peer-reviewed and professional studies related to sex trafficking, helpful for comprehending the wide range of approaches to understanding the issue, and for finding knowledgeable sources and additional data. Working on a tight deadline? Check out our blog posts, in which we and our invited experts will occasionally highlight and remark on key findings in scholarly studies and how they can be useful for stories on sex trafficking.
4. Definitions: What are we talking about when we talk about sex trafficking? Does it/doesn’t it require movement? (answer: no) Is it always trafficking when minors are involved? (answer: yes) When journalists clarify the terms they and their sources use, it improves story cohesion and promotes better understanding. This section also includes as helpful dos and don’ts some common missteps in terms and phrases used in sex trafficking coverage.
   

Don’t see what you need here? Send a note to theirinaproject@unc.edu, or tweet us @TheIrinaProject.

We understand the challenges of finding reliable information about trafficking. As we add to the TIP library, we’ll be transparent about the source of our data and any caveats that could affect your analyses.