'New York Times' contributors slam paper's coverage of transgender people

More than 200 New York Times contributors have signed an open letter published Wednesday calling out the legacy newspaper for its coverage of transgender issues.

In the letter addressed to the Times' associate managing editor for standards, the contributors say they have "serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper's reporting on transgender, non⁠-⁠binary, and gender nonconforming people."

Prominent Times writers, including opinion contributor Roxane Gay and culture journalists J Wortham and Dave Itzkoff, as well as occasional contributors such as Ed Yong of The Atlantic and Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker, signed the letter. While such a public rebuke of their editors is rare, journalists at The Times and elsewhere have become increasingly more willing to openly challenge newsroom leaders ever since the racial justice movement of 2020.

In the letter, they say the Times has treated coverage of gender diversity "with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language," and recent reporting has omitted some sources' associations with anti-trans groups.

They say, for example, a January article by correspondent Katie Baker that focused on the challenges schools face when students change their gender identity without their parents knowledge "misframed" the issue and failed to make clear that related lawsuits brought by parents against school districts are part of a legal strategy tied to groups that have identified trans people as an "existential threat."

The letter also focuses on a New York Times magazine article about children questioning their gender identity, in which author Emily Bazelon explored what she called "delicate issues" that had been turned into "political dynamite" by the right. The rate of regret for adults in the past who had gender-affirming care was very low, she wrote. But in today's society, she asked, "How many young people, especially those struggling with serious mental-health issues, might be trying to shed aspects of themselves they dislike?"

The letter also takes issue with a recent decision by the Times not to renew a contract for one of its opinion writers, Jennifer Finney Boylan, who is trans.

Some advocates see challenging the Times' coverage as part of the broader fight for the rights of trans people.

A group of more than 130 LBGTQ advocates and organizations released a statement on Wednesday supporting the contributors' letter, calling out the Times for "irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people" that elevates harmful and false information about trans issues and is "damaging to the paper's credibility."

It asks The Times to meet with transgender community leaders and hire at least four more reporters and editors who are trans.

The New York Times did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment. [Copyright 2023 NPR]