According to studies, The New York Times covered transgender issues in 66 percent of its articles.
A recent study conducted by Media Matters and GLAAD found that The New York Times failed to include trans voices in roughly two-thirds of its articles on the subject in the year following public outcry for its protection of anti-trans policy.
“The report of history has an obligation to provide its readers with the whole human toll of the anti-trans legislative assault,” said Ari Drennen, LGBTQ Program Director at Media Matters. “Trans people are more than conceptual conundrums that need to be debated from afar. They are living, breathing individuals whose voices and stories deserve to be heard and told in each and every anti-trans bill.”
Between February 15, 2023, and February 15, 2024, the Times published 65 articles addressing U.S. pro-trans policy. According to studies conducted by Media Matters and GLAAD, 66 percent of the articles did not contain a single transgender or gender-nonconforming person’s quote, 18 percent quoted misinformation from trans activists without adequate fact-checking or situational analysis, and six articles obscured sources’ anti-trans backgrounds, failing to discuss their past histories of fundamentalist rhetoric or actions.
The New York Times may be criticized for not fact-checking their articles accurately and including trans voices in their publications, according to a well-known news source. LGBTQ congressional scientist Allison Chapman told Truthout that the distorted content from The New York Times has contributed to the dangerous societal war against the transgender community.
The Times has faced criticism for its controversial reporting on transgender people and issues faced by the trans community in the past year, including restrictions on gender-affirming care.
Serena Sonoma wrote for GLAAD in April 2023, “Important front-page coverage has often missed the bigger picture of the trans community, choosing to hyper-focus on critically important yet mainstream healthcare, undermining its support among readers who know little about this care, and laundering extremist talking points as genuine concern.” The Times’ coverage has been criticized for not disclosing readers’ anti-LGBT and anti-trans histories, their coordination, and connections to long-standing anti-LGBT organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom.
Last February, over 150 LGBTQ organizations and leaders, including GLAAD, published an open letter condemning the Times’ harmful and inaccurate coverage of transgender people. The letter demanded that the Times stop publishing anti-trans articles, meet with transgender community leaders, and employ transgender writers and editors. According to GLAAD, the Times has not met any of the letter’s demands.
“As one of our first recommendations during the hundreds of LGBTQ education briefings we conduct with local and national newsrooms is to include LGBTQ voices in LGBTQ stories: interview the people whose experiences your coverage has impacted. The New York Times lacked that essential lesson in basic reporting and instead chose to follow a pattern of obscuring sources’ transgender connections and allowing their misinformation to spread unchecked,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD. “Our call for the Times to improve its coverage of transgender people is unwaveringly supported by more than 150 organizations, community leaders, and prominent LGBTQ people and allies.”
In April of last year, hundreds of Times contributors also sent a letter praising the organization’s handling of transgender issues. Times management responded by writing in a memo that participating in such a campaign violates the letter and spirit of our ethics policy. Our journalists are not permitted to join protests or align themselves with advocacy groups on matters of public policy. Additionally, we have a strict policy that prohibits Times journalists from publicly criticizing one another’s journalism or expressing their support for it.
In legal filings, anti-LGBT organizations have used The Times’ coverage to undermine transgender youth’s access to life-saving healthcare. In fact, Pamela Paul wrote an anti-transgender op-ed titled “As Kids, They Thought They Were Transgender, They No Longer Do,” which was published by the Times in February. It was thoroughly refuted by transgender activist and journalist Erin Reed as relying on “pseudoscience” and was referenced in a legal brief in Idaho within just four days of its publication.
“I felt compelled to emphasize how fundamental these pieces are to the legal frameworks that prevent our material survival. In the state’s defense of their anti-trans law banning this medical treatment for minors, according to Chase Strangio, the deputy director for transgender justice with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, in the early stages of the publication of Paul’s article. The distortions and the false debate are causing immediate and severe material harm that will be felt for generations.”
