By Elizabeth Nolan Brown . . . Is the Super Bowl a magnet for sex traffickers? Nope, and it never has been. But no matter how many times this wretched rumor gets debunked, some gullible members of the media insist on trotting it out anew every year.
This year, it’s the Associated Press and Time doing their part to poison the discourse, with an article warning that Uber drivers and hotel maids must be on high alert for this sham epidemic.
Luckily, a huge range of press has already thoroughly torn apart this nonsense in years past. . . .
Outside of some reporters with dubious judgement, the only people who are still earnestly pushing the idea that sporting events like the super bowl are hotbeds of human trafficking seem to be 1) politicians who have made a name for themselves stirring up crime panic, 2) state prosecutors, who like to use the prospect of “sex slaves” to justify ramping up their routine vice stings during the big game, and 3) the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, for whom the panic dovetails nicely with their efforts to round up immigrants and promiscuous women. But poke any “Super Bowl sex trafficking sting” headline from the past decade and all you’ll find is a bunch of sex workers and their customers arrested for trying to hook up with another consenting adult.
At this point, there’s simply no excuse for any reporter, politician, or other entity to repeat the Super Bowl Sex Trafficking lie. Those that do are either wholly incapable of basic research and reading comprehension or willfully trafficking in misinformation.
Read the full article, include a long list of articles on the same subject, here at reason.com.
