February 15, 2023, 11:14am
This morning, a group of almost 200 journalists and writers released an open letter addressed to the New York Times, expressing their “serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people” and criticizing how the paper has “follow[ed] the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy warranting new, punitive legislation.”
The letter, which presents a damning and deeply disquieting case against the Times‘ coverage, alleges that there has been “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.”
It goes on to reference several prominent Times op-eds and investigative features which have “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,” and which have actually been cited by Republican lawmakers in their efforts to pass anti-trans legislation.
Signees of the letter include dozens of prominent journalists and regular Times contributors, including Ed Yong, Lucy Sante, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Carmen Maria Machado, Alexander Chee, and Jia Tolentino.
You can add your name to the open letter here, and read a Hell Gate interview with Jo Livingstone about the impetus behind the letter here.
