New York Times Contributors Pen Open Letter Slamming Paper's Trans Coverage

A GLAAD campaign also is demanding changes from the paper of record.
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UPDATE: Feb. 17 — New York Times management defended the paper’s coverage in a letter to staff on Thursday and told employees who voiced public agreement with the criticism that they were violating company policy.

New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn mischaracterized the Times contributors’ letter by stating that it was part of the campaign by GLAAD, “an advocacy group.”

“It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort,” Kahn said. “Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name. Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy. That policy prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest actions on matters of public policy. We also have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks.”

He added: “Our coverage of transgender issues, including the specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written.”

The contributors say they only coordinated the timing of their campaign with GLAAD, which said it did not deliver a copy of the contributors’ letter to the Times as a paper spokesman had said on Wednesday.

“[T]hough we coordinated timing with GLAAD, our letters are very different documents. For example, we are not an advocacy organization. Our letter is addressed directly to the Standards editor, and makes a clear case drawing on the Times’ own history and editorial standards,” read an update posted Thursday on the contributors’ website.

More than 4,500 Times contributors have now signed the letter, alongside more than 20,000 readers.

PREVIOUSLY:

More than 850 New York Times contributors have signed a searing open letter conveying “serious concerns” about the ways the news organization has covered issues relating to transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people.

An open letter also published Wednesday on the topic from GLAAD, the LGBTQ advocacy group, attracted signatures from dozens of organizations and celebrities, including Judd Apatow, Gabrielle Union, Jonathan Van Ness and Margaret Cho.

Outside the Grey Lady’s Manhattan headquarters, a box truck sat parked with glaring messages on all sides decrying the paper’s coverage, while a handful of protesters marched on the sidewalk.

“DEAR NEW YORK TIMES: STOP QUESTIONING TRANS PEOPLE’S RIGHT TO EXIST & ACCESS TO MEDICAL CARE,” the truck’s message read on one side.

“EVERY MAJOR MEDICAL ASSOCIATION SUPPORTS GENDER-AFFIRMING HEALTHCARE FOR TRANSGENDER YOUTH,” another panel on the vehicle declared.

Both open letters called on the paper to implement immediate change.

The contributors’ letter, addressed to standards editor Philip B. Corbett, states that fair reporting on gender issues is “eclipsed” by deeply flawed stories and fretful headlines.

“[T]he 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,” the letter says.

Signatories include staff writers and accomplished authors like Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit and Jia Tolentino. Thousands of readers began adding their names Wednesday as well.

The contributors pointed specifically to two New York Times features: Emily Bazelon’s “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” and Katie Baker’s “When Students Change Gender Identity and Parents Don’t Know.” They said the stories failed to give readers key information about certain sources’ anti-transgender bias.

The group also laid out how Times reporting has been used to advance anti-transgender policies in laws and courts, with some officials relying on the paper’s “reputation as the ‘paper of record’ to justify criminalizing gender-affirming care,” despite the fact that such treatments as puberty blockers have been the standard of care for decades.

That people who do not conform to gender norms exist in the world, and have for a very long time, was highlighted by an anecdote about 14th-century English police interrogating a queer sex worker.

“This is not a cultural emergency,” the letter said.

It went on to recount how The New York Times treated gay people in decades past by withholding promotions for gay staffers and refusing to put news about the AIDS crisis on the front page until the disease had killed more than 500 New Yorkers.

“You no doubt recall a time in more recent history when it was ordinary to speak of homosexuality as a disease at the American family dinner table — a norm fostered in part by the New York Times’ track record of demonizing queers through the ostensible reporting of science,” the letter read.

The contributors called on Corbett to respond to their concerns.

In a response to HuffPost, New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said the company welcomes the feedback and understands how critics “see our coverage.”

“As a news organization, we pursue independent reporting on transgender issues that include profiling groundbreakers in the movement, challenges and prejudice faced by the community, and how society is grappling with debates about care,” Stadtlander said. He went on to defend the individual stories that were critiqued, saying that they “reported deeply and empathetically on issues of care and well-being for trans teens and adults.”

“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,” he said.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the number of New York Times contributors who have signed the letter. The figure as of Friday afternoon is more than 4,600.

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