CNN Freedom Project
The CNN Freedom Project is a year-long humanitarian news media campaign launched by CNN and CNN International in 2011 to "end modern-day slavery" and related illegal practices, including human trafficking.
It was started on the initiative of CNN International's vice president Tony Maddox, who was honored for this in 2015 by the U.S. Department of State as a Trafficking in Persons Report Hero.
In March 2019 their reporting on the fishing communities of Lake Volta in Ghana was criticized by the academics Betty Mensah and Samuel Okyere for its sensationalism. They charged that CNN ignored that many children and youth become self-sufficient fishermen in adulthood through their work and can thus be described as apprentices rather than slaves. They acknowledge that aspects of children's work on the lake can take place under dangerous and exploitative conditions, but that cases that should be described as child labour are deliberately being distorted to tell fantastic stories of child slavery and trafficking.
