The Utah-based anti-child sex trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad has gained immense popularity on social media in recent years. But according to a 2021 article in The Atlantic, the group and many of its well-meaning followers are spurred on largely by conspiratorial thinking.
In her article, Atlantic staff writer Kaitlyn Tiffany calls concerns over child sex trafficking in America a moral panic. Of course, sex trafficking does happen, but, Tiffany writes, it’s not nearly the problem many OUR volunteers make it out to be. The statistics they give are inflated, the data is often misleading and the motivating language sometimes feels like it's been pulled straight from a QAnon conspiracy theory. Tiffany joined us in 2022 to talk about Operation Underground Railroad, the realities of child-sex-trafficking and how social media is helping to fan the flames of a new moral panic.
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Kaitlyn Tiffany | Staff writer for The Atlantic. Her article is "The Great (Fake) Child-Sex-Trafficking Epidemic."
Airdate: Friday, January 7, 2022 at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Web Extra: July 26, 2023