On 15 February 2022, 150 New York Times contributors wrote a public letter to Times’ leadership, citing “serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people” (“NYT Contributors’ Letter”). They were followed by a second, unaffiliated letter from GLAAD, citing the same concerns - “repeatedly platform[ing] cisgender (non-transgender) people spreading inaccurate and harmful misinformation” (“New York Times Sign on Letter”). These letters detailed grievances with the New York Times’ reporting on transgender issues: the frequent use of misinterpreted statistics, most prominent in articles such as “How Changeable Is Gender” by Richard Friedman and “They Paused Puberty, but is there a Cost?” by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett, the hiring of a lawyer from the Alliance Defending Freedom, (noted by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group) and the lack of transgender perspectives in opinion or News. Both letters were met with a dismissive statement from Charlie Stadtlander, The New York Times’ director of external communications, “…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” (qtd. in Owen). An internal letter was also leaked, from executive editor Joseph Kahn where he admonished those who signed the letter: “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'' (Tani). This blatant suppression of free speech is confusing, especially given the New York Times’ reputation of unbiased, high-quality reporting. But that reputation may very well be the reason for the behavior observed. In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman outline the reasons for biased and unreliable reporting in the mass media. They posit that the media is put through five filters, which influence their bias to better serve the “elite.” Although the original book is more focused on economic controls due to its focus on Cold War politics, it is still an eye opening lens through which to view the reporting from the New York Times.
The first lens is the ownership – the biases of those who run the newspapers, those who hold high positions, and the companies which hold influence through stocks. The New York Times is publicly traded – its largest company stockholders include Vanguard, Blackstone, and Farallon Capital (Yahoo Finance). Not exactly the paragons of business integrity, but how they would influence reporting on transgender people seems a bit of a stretch. Instead, one might look at ‘ownership’ as a position in a dynamic of power. Just as a newspaper owned by rich companies may not publish something negative about those companies, or something positive about unions, so then might a company run by people with an upper hand in a social power dynamic not be keen on taking a strong stance against the dynamic they benefit from. In GLAAD’s letter, they make a specific demand for the New York Times to hire at least four full time transgender staff, something that went unaddressed by New York Times’ leadership. This lack of transgender people in positions of power within the New York Times may lead to their internal biases leaking into the reporting. Whether intentional or not, there is an obvious example of this happening in the past – heterosexual executive editor Abe Rosenthal’s adamant refusal to cover the AIDs crisis, or the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The word “gay” wasn’t allowed in publication for his entire time as executive editor, from 1969 to 1986. Even at the time, people warned the New York Times about the effects of their reporting but it had no influence. The parallels are clear; when “…Asked why he maintained the ban on the word ‘gay,’ Rosenthal said that he ‘felt at that time that the Times should not use a word for political purposes until that word has become accepted as part of the language’” (qtd. in Mirkinson). This is eerily reminiscent of the tone Joseph Kahn took in his internal letter. Both emphasize how the New York Times was not to be used for political/advocacy purposes.
The second filter is funding. Manufacturing Consent focuses primarily on advertising, but it clarifies this is about all forms of profit. While the New York Times does make a significant profit from advertising – $523 million in 2022 – the majority of its profit is made from its subscription model, which brought in almost one billion dollars in 2022 (Trendline). Manufacturing Consent outlines the situation as such: “For a television network, an audience gain or loss of one percentage point in the Neilson ratings translates into a change in advertising revenue of from $80 to $100 million a year, with some variation depending on measures of audience ‘quality’” (Chomsky and Herman 16). While the New York Times is not a television show, the sentiment still stands. They cannot risk alienating their subscriber base, especially their most affluent. By maintaining a hem-hawing attitude around the transgender “debate,” they can continue to draw in left-liberal subscribers who value the New York Times’ reporting on other subjects as well as centrist-right subscribers who view the transphobic reporting positively. The only people who they risk losing are the true left – an admittedly small minority, who are more likely to be lower-income and therefore less likely to be able to afford the subscription, and more likely than conservatives to bypass paywalls illegally. (Graf-Vlachy, Goyal, Ouardi, & König)
The third filter is media sourcing – from who, what, and where a media outlet sources its information. This issue was particularly prominent in articles such as “They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost” by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett. The article received serious criticisms outside of the letters from the New York Times contributors and GLAAD (though it was mentioned in both) – prompting an official debunking by the USPATH (United States Professional Association for Transgender Health) and WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health). The article failed to consult an expert on the topic of puberty blockers, instead asking an adult endocrinologist who had never worked with transgender youth, and an epidemiologist with “…no experience in clinical medicine, child and identity development, bone density, or any aspect of the field of transgender health” (USPATH and WPATH). By manipulating the sources used, Twohey and Jewett make it seem as if the medical consensus is shaky or unfounded, when it’s the exact opposite. In Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky specify that “The media need a steady, reliable flow of raw material news…They can not afford to have reporters and cameras at all places where important stories may break” (18). While this is less true nowadays, with the advent of social media there is still some grain of truth. The New York Times cannot report every day: “Healthcare Professionals Still Agree: Transgender People Deserving of Healthcare” or “Trans Person Living Happily, More at 7.” And due to the other filters, they are uninclined to report on transgender discrimination. They must find a story about the topic, and so they sensationalize stories that would otherwise be small or local news.
The fourth filter is the shakiest. Flak is the influence and ridicule of outside lobbying groups, notable ones in this context would be the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) or the Liberty Council. The New York Times may face pressure from these groups, but it seems more like they are courting them. In January of 2023 they hired a columnist from the Alliance Defending Freedom as a full-time contributor (NYTCO). Perhaps a lack of flak is how best to put it – the left does not have the significant funding and lobbying power that the transphobic right does, and so the New York Times remains unmoved from their position.
The fifth and final filter is anticommunism, or fear ideology. The right has long since associated transgender people with communists – degeneracy going hand in hand with anti-capitalism in their eyes. But with the downfall of the USSR, anti-communism doesn’t have such a stronghold on the American public as it did when Chomsky and Herman were writing Manufacturing Consent. Instead, it is looked at as an ideology of fear – exploiting the public fear of certain groups, warranted or unwarranted, to push an agenda. When once it was the communists infiltrating the government to push anti-American ideas, it’s now the transgender women infiltrating the bathrooms to peep on your children. By validating these fears, engaging with them, and telling people they’re not unfounded, the New York Times and other anti-trans media outlets are creating a new Red Scare – the Trans Panic. As USPATH and WPATH put it, “Misinformation about the science behind the care of trans youth, such as presented in [“They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost.”], can be and has been used to justify political actions or even violence against the trans and gender diverse community.”
The New York Times insistence on standing with its transphobic narratives is telling of its attitude towards all LGBTQ+ movements. As it was during the AIDS epidemic, it is now: silence and ridicule until they realize they were in the wrong, at which point the New York Times will lament on how sorry they are, and how they didn’t mean it, and they’ll publish an anthology in 20 years time about all the transgender reporters they employed and wipe their hands clean. The lack of transgender people in positions of power limits any accountability transphobic narratives may face, and despite GLAAD’s demands to rectify this, the New York Times has failed to hire any transgender people, instead hiring a member of the anti-transgender hate group Alliance Defending Freedom. The New York Times is not motivated to change because there is no monetary consequences to their actions – the liberal-left will continue to purchase a subscription due to the other reporting done by the Times, and the center-right will read any transphobic articles gleefully, even using them to uphold anti-trans legislation such as in Alabama (Eknes-Tucker et al.). Those who read these stories will believe them because of the Times’ reputation as a credible news source, even if they are not using credible sources and blatantly misrepresenting the facts. Transgender people are the current polarizing debate at the election boxes and the New York Times is contributing to the persecution and assault of transgender people; people who are forced to watch their rights be debated, their children taken away, and their fellow trans people murdered. The New York Times does not care about these people, because they see caring about them and reporting on them fairly as “activism.” Transgender people are at a significantly increased risk of suicide and self-harm, which is directly linked to negative media attention (Hughto et al.). If they do not make a change soon, they will again be culpable for the death of thousands. Who could know what might have happened if the New York Times had levied their considerable influence during the AIDS epidemic? Perhaps thousands may still be alive, public officials pressured into action by in depth, person focused reporting. Perhaps the hundreds of thousands of brothers and sisters lost to AIDS might still be here, growing old beside their families, had they received access to lifesaving medications like PEP and PREP, if the medical community had been urged to act earlier. But they did not, and the dead are dead. The New York Times seems steady on their course towards repeating this history, unwilling or unable to learn from their mistakes. The time to change was ten years ago, but the next best time is today.
Works Cited
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