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Tipsheet

LGBTQ+ Activists Accuse The New York Times of ‘Editorial Bias’ in Coverage of Transgender Issues

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File

Over a hundred current and former contributors for the left-wing paper The New York Times signed an open letter accusing its editors of “editorial bias” in its coverage of “transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people.”

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The letter, dated Wednesday, was addressed to the Times’ associate managing editor Philip B. Corbett and slammed the paper’s “biased” coverage of “gender diversity” issues, even in coverage that pertains to children undergoing irreversible gender mutilation surgeries:

Plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly. Their work is eclipsed, however, by what one journalist has calculated as over 15,000 words of front⁠-⁠page Times coverage debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone.

The newspaper’s editorial guidelines demand that reporters “preserve a professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias” when cultivating their sources, remaining “sensitive that personal relationships with news sources can erode into favoritism, in fact or appearance.” Yet the Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources.

For example, Emily Bazelon’s article “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” uncritically used the term “patient zero” to refer to a trans child seeking gender⁠-⁠affirming care, a phrase that vilifies transness as a disease to be feared. Bazelon quoted multiple expert sources who have since expressed regret over their work’s misrepresentation. Another source, Grace Lidinksy⁠-⁠Smith, was identified as an individual person speaking about a personal choice to detransition, rather than the President of GCCAN, an activist organization that pushes junk science and partners with explicitly anti⁠-⁠trans hate groups.

[...]

As thinkers, we are disappointed to see the New York Times follow the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy warranting new, punitive legislation. Puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and gender⁠-⁠affirming surgeries have been standard forms of care for cis and trans people alike for decades. Legal challenges to gender⁠-⁠nonconformity date back even further, with 34 cities in 21 states passing laws against cross⁠-⁠dressing between 1848 and 1900, usually enforced alongside so-called prohibitions against public indecency that disproportionately targeted immigrants, people of color, sex workers, and other marginalized groups. Such punishments are documented as far back as 1394, when police in England detained Eleanor Rykener on suspicion of the crime of sodomy, exposing her after an interrogation as “John.” This is not a cultural emergency.

Some of us are trans, non⁠-⁠binary, or gender nonconforming, and we resent the fact that our work, but not our person, is good enough for the paper of record. Some of us are cis, and we have seen those we love discover and fight for their true selves, often swimming upstream against currents of bigotry and pseudoscience fomented by the kind of coverage we here protest. All of us daresay our stance is unremarkable, even common, and certainly not deserving of the Times’ intense scrutiny. A tiny percentage of the population is trans, and an even smaller percentage of those people face the type of conflict the Times is so intent on magnifying. There is no rapt reporting on the thousands of parents who simply love and support their children, or on the hardworking professionals at the New York Times enduring a workplace made hostile by bias—a period of forbearance that ends today.

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A slew of “woke” celebrities signed the letter, including actress Lena Dunham, actress Cynthia Nixon, and Jameela Jamil. The letter was hand-delivered to the paper’s office in Manhattan by members of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), according to the New York Post. Those who signed the letter outlined demands for the Times’ editorial staff, which includes hiring “at least four transgender writers and editors within the next three months.” The letter pointed out that the Times did not renew a contract with one of their writers, Jennifer Finney Boylan, who is transgender.

A coordinated second letter given to the Times was spearheaded by GLAAD and signed by about 130 of the country’s largest LGBTQ+ organizations. 

“It is appalling that the Times would dedicate so many resources and pages to platforming the voices of extremist anti-LGBTQ activists who have built their careers on denigrating and dehumanizing LGBTQ people, especially transgender people,” the second letter read.

Charlie Stadtlander, the Times’ director of external communications, confirmed to news outlets that the paper received both letters. 

According to NBC News, a billboard truck drove around the Times’ office with messages like “Stop questioning trans people’s right to exist & access medical care.” 

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“Our journalism strives to explore, interrogate and reflect the experiences, ideas and debates in society — to help readers understand them. Our reporting did exactly that and we’re proud of it,” Stadtlander told NPR

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