Figueroa Street and the Ethical Duty of Care

Looking back at a New York Times magazine story to examine what responsible coverage of sex trafficking looks like—and what it doesn’t.

Last fall, the New York Times magazine published a story by Emily Baumgaertner Nunn, a national health reporter, about the commercial sexual exploitation of children on a fifty-block stretch of Figueroa Street in South Los Angeles known as the Blade. To report the piece, Baumgaertner Nunn embedded with vice investigators for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as they carried out undercover operations. She also interviewed dozens of people—trafficking survivors, aid workers, experts, officials. Accompanying the text were photographs by Katy Grannan, an art photographer who contributes frequently to the Times, depicting Black and brown women and girls, baring skin, in platform heels, most in police custody, some in handcuffs. The headline asked, “Can Anyone Rescue the Trafficked Girls of LA’s Figueroa Street?”