April 5, 2010

Why Diss Lindsay Lohan for Tackling Child Trafficking?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Hey everyone, I’m Lindsay Lohan, and this is Lindsay Lohan’s Indian Journey (BBC3). India’s, like, this crazy place in maybe Asia? The people are sooo cute, and real skinny. Also they’re mad drivers like me – maybe they all do tons of cocaine too. But this isn’t about drugs or driving (for once!). Or who I’m dating or not dating. It’s about child trafficking, which is this massive issue out here.

That is not the opening voice-over of Lindsay Lohan’s Indian Journey, but the more puerile of two scathing Guardian articles (plus a blog item) about it within the last seven days. Alright, it’s weird that LiLo is the host of a BBC documentary about child trafficking. And the inarticulateness in the clip below isn’t even the least compelling commentary she offers during the course of the film:

Still. I’m going to have to side against the haters on this one.  I’m not really qualified to judge whether Lohan is genuinely interested in learning about child trafficking or is using the issue to scrub her ditsy image, but even the latter still does the service of raising awareness. In the doc, we go to the slums; we look at how globalization and economic “progress” have exacerbated demand for underage slaves. We meet children whose parents give them up to traffickers for the extra income, sometimes repeatedly, talk with very young rape victims, hear more kids talking about being beaten than we can count. “In fact, it would be [hard] to argue that the BBC had produced a bad documentary here,” admits the Independent. “Who knows what their motive for choosing Lohan as their star was? To raise awareness among a demographic—supermarket-tabloid readers—who wouldn’t otherwise have taken an interest? To generate publicity? To boost ratings?”

Well, yes. Consider how many more people watched Lindsay Lohan’s Indian Journey than would have Learn About Child Trafficking With John Davies. Who? Right. As I’ve mentioned before, Thailand, for example, has a problem with abusing refugees, but it took Angelina Jolie’s involvement for the issue to really explode into the news. And I’m gonna guess, that these two stories snarking about Lohan is way more headlines than the Guardian gives child trafficking in a typical week.

 

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate