The New York Times admonished its staff and contributors who accused the newspaper of “bias” in its coverage of transgender issues, according to an internal email sent to staff that was obtained by The Post.
“We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums,” the email from Executive Editor Joseph Kahn and Opinion Editor Kathleen Kingsbury said.
An open letter sent to the Times on Wednesday from hundreds of contributors and advocates accused the paper of “editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people,” and even called out some reporters by name.
A coordinated but separate statement addressed to the Times from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation [GLAAD] was signed by scores of activist organizations and also called out the newspaper’s alleged “irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people” over the past year.
“It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism,” the email sent to staff said. “In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name.”
The Times said that participating in such a campaign is against the newspaper’s ethics policy that “prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest action 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,” the email says.
“Our coverage of transgender issues, including the specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written. The journalists who produced those stories nonetheless have endured months of attacks, harassment and threats,” the email continues.
“The letter also ignores The Times’ strong commitment to covering all aspects of transgender issues, including the life experience of transgender people and the prejudice and violence against them in our society.”
The accusatory letter has since been signed by over 1,000 contributors — including prominent authors, artists, photographers and politicians — and countersigned by 23,000 media workers and readers, a response letter from the signatories to the paper said on Thursday.
Wednesday’s letter accused the Times of stoking anxieties about “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.”
It singled out Emily Bazelon’s June 2022 NYT Magazine article “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” for referring to a child’s secret gender-affirming care as “patient zero” and for quoting expert sources it says “have since expressed regret over their work’s misrepresentation.”
It additionally calls out a feature piece published last month by Katie Baker titled “When Students Change Gender Identity and Parents Don’t Know,” which discusses legal challenges faced by schools when students change their identity without their parents’ knowledge.
Signers claim that the article does not make clear that court cases brought against schools are part of a larger strategy from anti-trans groups who have called trans people “an existential threat to society.”
The Times’ coverage has had damaging effects on the trans community across the country, the letter states, as its articles have been cited by state officials and lawmakers in their efforts to pass anti-trans legislation.
In a response to the Times’ rebuke on Thursday, a new letter criticized the Times’ response to the coalition letter “as an opportunity to attempt to dismiss the well-documented complaint of editorial bias detailed in our letter.
Thursday’s letter from contributors and staff, which was also addressed to associate managing editor for standards Philip B. Corbett, claims that the paper “avoided addressing the substantive concerns in the letter by simply alleging that it “came to [them] from GLAAD,” — who hand-delivered the Times an accompanying letter of their own, but not the Times contributors’ letter.
“Though 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.
GLAAD said its efforts to reach out to the paper to educate and “help reporters source stories,” have been largely unsuccessful with the exception of one instance when, after four months of trying to get in contact with the paper had the chance to sit down with staff.
Their letter made three demands of the paper:
1. Stop printing biased anti-trans stories.
2. Hold a meeting and listen to members of the transgender community
3. Hire at least four transgender writers and editors within the next three months.
The Times said that it will continue to “invite discussion, criticism and robust debate about our coverage. Even when we don’t agree, constructive criticism from out colleagues who care, delivered respectfully and through the right channels, strengthens our reporting.”
