NYT Contributors’ Letter (original) (raw)

UPDATE: Thursday, April 6, 2023

The following was sent to NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger on Thursday, April 6 2023:

Dear A.G. Sulzberger,

We write to address the _Times_’ response to our February 15 letter, which includes statements by the external communications department, memos by the newspaper’s masthead, and standards editor Philip B. Corbett’s reply of March 1.

The _Times_’ actions in recent weeks have strained the credibility of its stated commitment to, as Corbett wrote, “careful, thoughtful discussions.” Leadership has repeatedly and falsely claimed that our letter was delivered with a different letter from GLAAD in a cynical effort to dismiss its own contributors and staff as “advocates” and justify attempts to intimidate and retaliate against Times staff who share our concerns. In a workplace with a documented history of institutional homophobia, one that has long been hostile to its few trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming employees, speaking out about anti-trans bias clearly constitutes protected activity.

Neither your employees nor your freelance contributors have been able to engage you “respectfully and through the right channels,” as Joe Kahn put it in his internal memo. Staff have tried since at least 2021 to address their concerns on this issue internally. Their diligent efforts have been fruitless. As one staffer told Vanity Fair, “[...] New York Times employees are feeling profound hurt, disagreeing deeply on core issues, and it feels like leadership is nowhere to be found, except for a threatening letter.”

There are undoubtedly Times reporters who, as we stated in the contributors’ letter, report “deeply and empathetically on issues of care and well-being for trans people,” as Philip B. Corbett notes in his response. But the Times is investing far more editorial resources into inflammatory, antagonistic reporting than this kind of coverage—and that reporting has been used to accelerate an ongoing campaign of anti-trans legislation.

On February 28 of this year, Mississippi signed into law a ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

On March 1 in Oklahoma, a bill banning insurance coverage for trans care advanced from the State House to the Senate.

On March 2, Tennessee banned gender-affirming health care for trans children.

When these and other healthcare bans have passed, the Times often waited days, sometimes weeks to inform readers, if at all. Even when the paper has mentioned these developments, it has done so briefly, often buried towards the bottom of tangentially related stories. The Times claims to report “all the news that’s fit to print,” as its famous masthead motto goes. If so, then the dearth of substantive coverage on the recent wave of laws banning gender-affirming care for minors—each one a cruel, politicized intervention into families’ private medical choices—sends readers a definitive message.

For documentation of these and other events that have transpired since publishing our initial open letter, please see the attached timeline, which includes relevant dates and citations.

Instead of investigating this news, Times leadership has spent recent weeks combing through the 1,200 contributor signatories, as well as the 34,000 signatories who joined in solidarity, to find staffers to intimidate. (The _Times_’ editorial board may have had a point last year when they lamented that free speech is increasingly threatened in the workplace.)

The editorial bias centered in our initial complaint is a cumulative phenomenon resulting from the uneven allocation of space and editorial interest to one “side” of a hot-button issue. Narrowly focusing on any individual story shifts focus from the _Times_’ apparent editorial strategy: “using trans people as a political pawn to maintain a centrist reputation to keep from being seen as too liberal of a paper,” as S. Leigh Thompson, a former Times consultant on gender DEI has said.

In the weeks since the publication of our letter, the Times has issued an undated correction to remove the phrase “patient zero” from the Times Magazine cover story “The Battle Over Gender Therapy.” We commend this step, but given the sweeping efforts to curtail trans people’s access to healthcare—a campaign that has already explicitly cited “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” in court—this minor edit is not enough. Another staffer told Vanity Fair they are “looking forward to seeing an admonishment note or whatever in the Times museum upstairs, next to the gay discrimination issues.” While we hope that Times leadership will avoid this outcome—hand-wringing and an apology that comes too late for the thousands of trans people currently under assault—leadership seems committed to its inevitability.

If the Times does change course, it will be because of the tens of thousands of journalists, media workers, and readers who made their voices heard. Real, sustained change will come from these people standing up for themselves, their friends, their colleagues, and their loved ones. We will be there with them.

Sincerely,

Harron Walker (she/her), Sean T. Collins (he/him), Cecilia Gentili (she/her), Jo Livingstone (they/them), Muna Mire (they/them), Eric Thurm (he/him or they/them), Chris Randle (he/him), and Olivia Aylmer (she/her).

Please direct any questions to NYTTransSolidarity@gmail.com.

UPDATE: Friday, February 24, 2023

The following update initially went out to people who signed the letter as NYT contributors.

The response to the letter has been overwhelming, including signatures from over 1,200 New York Times contributors and over 34,000 media workers, Times readers, and subscribers. Many of you took substantial personal and professional risk in signing the letter. It has made a real difference in this fight.

That support has already had tangible effects—our voices are beginning to be heard. The letter has been covered by The Nation, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, and MSNBC, among many places. Despite so much public attention to the _Times_’ coverage of trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people, the Times has thus far refused to substantively engage with our concerns.

The paper’s initial public statement elided the difference between our letter and the letter organized by GLAAD and other coalition organizations, and falsely stated that our letter was delivered to the Times by GLAAD—an error the Times has yet to address. More than a week after it was originally sent on February 15th, the _Times_’ only direct response to our letter—other than associate managing editor for standards Philip Corbett’s out of office auto-reply—has come through their external communications department. Pre-empting the Times newsroom, the public relations professionals categorically state that the Times “reject any claim that [their] coverage is biased.”

In the meantime, on February 21st, the Mississippi Senate passed a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. When its governor signs the bill into law, as he has sworn to do, Mississippi will join six other states in enacting similar restrictions. Over the last two weeks, legislation limiting access to gender-affirming care has moved forward in at least seven other state legislatures. One such bill, introduced in Texas, would eliminate nearly all coverage for gender-affirming care, even for adults—making medical transition effectively impossible for anyone unable to pay out of pocket for costly procedures. Eliminating the ability to medically transition is merely one step toward eliminating the existence of trans people entirely—the admitted end goal of the conservative lobbying groups pushing the bans on trans kids’ healthcare access. Nor is access to healthcare the only legislative target. In recent weeks, lawmakers have introduced at least five new anti-trans bills, including two that would prohibit trans people from accessing restroom facilities that correspond to their genders. (Contrary to some claims, bathrooms bills have in no way “died out.”)

Times readers have been ill-informed of these developments. In the eight days since we released our letter, the Times has only published one article substantively engaging with the nationwide legislative assault on trans American life. Megan K. Stack’s “When Parents Hear That Their Child ‘Is Not Normal and Should Not Exist” is an excellent look at trans life and the families of trans people—the type of coverage that is too often overwhelmed by the deluge of biased reporting. It should not bear the burden of being the Times’ only in-depth examination of recent bans on gender-affirming care.

The dearth of coverage of these laws is glaring given that, in the same timeframe, the Times has published multiple stories about European nations contending with laws that would allow citizens to legally transition without first having received a formal gender dysphoria diagnosis. This disparity in emphasis is undeniable. It’s no wonder that the Times has yet to address Tom Scocca’s analysis in Popula, which found that the paper spent 15,000 words of prime front-page real estate on stories stoking a moral panic about trans kids’ healthcare.

Instead, executive editor Joe Kahn and Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury sent a memo to staff stating that they “do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists” in echoing our complaint. Management’s signaled intention to silence dissent recalls the era when gay staff at the New York Times were afraid to come out for fear of retaliation—part of a checkered history cited in the original letter.

In fact, as NewsGuild president Jon Schleuss noted publicly, and as New York Guild president Susan DeCarava noted to Times staff and management, signing the letter—and pushing back on bias in coverage—is clearly protected activity for staff, especially when conditions at the paper contribute to a hostile working environment. We not only stand with Times staff and the NewsGuild of New York members organizing to improve their working conditions, we look forward to enthusiastically supporting their efforts.

These legislative debates are shaping the lives of thousands of people. They are also a major ongoing news story, one we hope the Times will eventually cover with the rigor its own editorial guidelines stipulate. Your support has been instrumental in making these editorial and workplace problems known. We reiterate our request for a serious and considered response.

Yours faithfully,

Harron Walker (she/her), Sean T. Collins (he/him), Cecilia Gentili (she/her), Jo Livingstone (they/them), Muna Mire (they/them), Eric Thurm (he/him or they/them), Chris Randle (he/him), and Olivia Aylmer (she/her).

Please direct any questions to NYTTransSolidarity@gmail.com.

UPDATE: Thursday, February 16, 2023

We are disappointed that the New York Times chose to use their public response to Wednesday’s coalition letter from GLAAD and other organizations as an opportunity to attempt to dismiss the well-documented complaint of editorial bias detailed in our letter. Times representatives avoided addressing the substantive concerns in the letter by simply alleging that it “came to [them] through GLAAD.” However, GLAAD confirmed to us that they did not deliver a copy of our letter to the New York Times. We look forward to clarification from the Times.

Additionally, 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.

Out of hand, the _Times_’ comments dismiss the concerns put to them by, at last count, over 1000 contributors to the New York Times—among them eminent writers, artists, photographers, and holders of elected office—and the countersignatures of 23,000 media workers, readers and subscribers to the newspaper.

We await a courteous reply.

In the meantime, we welcome additional support. Sign the letter and share your thoughts.

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

For the attention of Philip B. Corbett, associate managing editor for standards at The New York Times.

Dear Philip,

We write to you as a collective of New York Times contributors with serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non⁠-⁠binary, and gender nonconforming people.

Plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly. Their work is eclipsed, however, by what one journalist has calculated as 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.

The newspaper’s editorial guidelines demand that reporters “preserve a professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias” when cultivating their sources, remaining “sensitive that personal relationships with news sources can erode into favoritism, in fact or appearance.” Yet the 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.

For example, Emily Bazelon’s article “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” uncritically used the term “patient zero” to refer to a trans child seeking gender⁠-⁠affirming care, a phrase that vilifies transness as a disease to be feared. Bazelon quoted multiple expert sources who have since expressed regret over their work’s misrepresentation. Another source, Grace Lidinksy⁠-⁠Smith, was identified as an individual person speaking about a personal choice to detransition, rather than the President of GCCAN, an activist organization that pushes junk science and partners with explicitly anti⁠-⁠trans hate groups.

In a similar case, Katie Baker’s recent feature “When Students Change Gender Identity and Parents Don’t Know” misframed the battle over children’s right to safely transition. The piece fails to make clear that court cases brought by parents who want schools to out their trans children are part of a legal strategy pursued by anti-trans hate groups. These groups have identified trans people as an “existential threat to society” and seek to replace the American public education system with Christian homeschooling, key context Baker did not provide to Times readers.

The natural destination of poor editorial judgment is the court of law. Last year, Arkansas’ attorney general filed an amicus brief in defense of Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which would make it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment, for any medical provider to administer certain gender⁠-⁠affirming medical care to a minor (including puberty blockers) that diverges from their sex assigned at birth. The brief cited three different New York Times articles to justify its support of the law: Bazelon’s “The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” Azeen Ghorayshi’s “Doctors Debate Whether Trans Teens Need Therapy Before Hormones,” and Ross Douthat’s “How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War.” As recently as February 8th, 2023, attorney David Begley’s invited testimony to the Nebraska state legislature in support of a similar bill approvingly cited the _Times_’ reporting and relied on its reputation as the “paper of record” to justify criminalizing gender⁠-⁠affirming care.

Douthat’s piece was published in the Opinion section, which lost one of the paper’s most consistently published trans writers, Jennifer Finney Boylan, following the _Times_’ recent decision not to renew her contract.

As thinkers, we are disappointed to see the New York Times follow the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy warranting new, punitive legislation. Puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and gender⁠-⁠affirming surgeries have been standard forms of care for cis and trans people alike for decades. Legal challenges to gender⁠-⁠nonconformity date back even further, with 34 cities in 21 states passing laws against cross⁠-⁠dressing between 1848 and 1900, usually enforced alongside so-called prohibitions against public indecency that disproportionately targeted immigrants, people of color, sex workers, and other marginalized groups. Such punishments are documented as far back as 1394, when police in England detained Eleanor Rykener on suspicion of the crime of sodomy, exposing her after an interrogation as “John.” This is not a cultural emergency.

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.

In 1963, the New York Times published a front⁠-⁠page story with the title “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern,” which stated that homosexuals saw their own sexuality as “an inborn, incurable disease”—one that scientists, the Times announced, now thought could be “cured.” The word “gay” started making its way into the paper. Then, in 1975, the Times published an article by Clifford Jahr about a queer cruise (the kind on a boat) featuring a “sadomasochistic fashion show.” On the urging of his shocked mother, Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger sent down the order: Stop covering these people. The Times style guide was updated to include the following dictum, which stood until 1987: “Do not use gay as a synonym for homosexual unless it appears in the formal, capitalized name of an organization or in quoted matter.”

New York Times managing editor and executive editor A. M. Rosenthal neglected to put AIDS on the front page until 1983, by which time the virus had already killed 500 New Yorkers. He withheld planned promotions from colleagues he learned on the grapevine were gay. Many of his employees feared being outed. William F. Buckley published his op-ed arguing that people with HIV/AIDS should all be forcibly tattooed in the Times. Obituaries in the Times ascribed death from HIV/AIDS to “undisclosed causes” or a “rare disorder,” and left the partners of the deceased out entirely from its record of their lives. This era of hateful rhetoric also saw the rise of the term “patient zero,” used to falsely accuse an HIV/AIDS patient of deliberately infecting others. This is the same rhetoric that transphobic policymakers recently reintroduced to the American lawmaking apparatus by quoting Emily Bazelon’s Times article.

Some of us are trans, non⁠-⁠binary, or gender nonconforming, and we resent the fact that our work, but not our person, is good enough for the paper of record. Some of us are cis, and we have seen those we love discover and fight for their true selves, often swimming upstream against currents of bigotry and pseudoscience fomented by the kind of coverage we here protest. All of us daresay our stance is unremarkable, even common, and certainly not deserving of the _Times_’ intense scrutiny. A tiny percentage of the population is trans, and an even smaller percentage of those people face the type of conflict the Times is so intent on magnifying. There is no rapt reporting on the thousands of parents who simply love and support their children, or on the hardworking professionals at the New York Times enduring a workplace made hostile by bias—a period of forbearance that ends today.

We await your response.

Yours sincerely,

and 20,000 media workers, subscribers, and readers of the New York Times.

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