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Speaker 1: This is The Takeaway with MHP from WNYC and TRX, in collaboration with GVH News in Boston.

Melissa Harris-Perry: On Wednesday, contributors, journalists, and sources for The New York Times sent a letter addressing what they view as anti-trans coverage from the front pages of one of the nation's papers of record. According to the letter, trans journalists have spoken out about these concerns for quite some time. In the letter, they now quote serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper's reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people.

In response, a spokesperson for The New York Times provided a comment that reads in part, "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." Joining me now is Harron Walker. Harron is a co-author of the letter and a freelance journalist with bylines in Vulture, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. Harron, welcome to The Takeaway.

Harron Walker: Hi, Melissa, thanks for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I really appreciate you being here. Talk to me about the genesis, the origins of this letter.

Harron Walker: In terms of the very specific details, a few people I knew from the Freelance Solidarity Project, which is essentially a union of sorts for freelance writers and other media workers, illustrators, photographers, editors, anyone who works in media that's based in New York City, I used to organize with them a few years ago.

A few people I'd met through that organization reached out to me about two weeks and a couple of days ago expressing the same frustrations I've had, many other people in media have had, trans or cis or non-binary, gender non-conforming, about the ways in which The New York Times along with many other legacy media publications cover trans issues as if trans people and what we're facing are all abstract concepts up for debate with two sides, one side being, "Maybe you're wrong by yourself, you don't deserve the health care that you say you need. You don't deserve to live the lives that you and many other in parts of the country are living."

From there, we quickly snowballed. We got back a couple of other people on board. In total, it was eight of us. We got to work, figuring out what this letter would be. We decided it would come to be addressed to the standard's editor, Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards at The New York Times. We figured out that our angle would be addressing the ways in which there is an anti-trans bias, one that violates The New York Times' own standards laid out by the standards desk.

Within a week we were putting together names, contacting people to gauge interest. By last weekend, we were beginning to send out the letter to potential signatories, confirming interest. We thought it'd be really strong to have us writing as one, as a collective of New York Times contributors. In the broadest sense, anyone who's ever contributed to The New York Times as a photographer, illustrator, fact checker, writer, critic, because we are people that The New York Times has deemed trustworthy, respectable enough, talented enough, correct enough as journalists to be able to contribute to their paper.

The point of our letter is to argue that we want to keep contributing to their paper, that there is great coverage coming out of the paper. Just on this one issue, when it comes to coverage of trans people, in the reported editorial, particularly of the last year or two, you've seen as much as 15,000 words of front page Times coverage concerning trans children and their access to healthcare as calculated by the journalist Tom Scocca in a recent piece for Popular.

This is a population that makes up about like 300,000 people, just trans people, non-binary people between the ages of 12 and 18 according to a Pew Research study last year. That's 300,000 people. Not all of them are medically transitioning, but even if they were, that's the 1% of 1% of the population, yet there is this intense magnifying lens placed upon them in the front page of The Times. Why is that? It's just one of the many reasons in which we argue that there is an anti-trans bias when that is unethical for The Times' own standards.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to zero in on on this point around the particular way that healthcare, in particular healthcare for children, is being framed as a political debate as opposed to being framed as a question of healthcare provision for minors, for children.

Harron Walker: Yes. Actually, the one thing that we do point out in the letter itself is that some of the articles fail to totally capture or provide the necessary key context to the broader legislative political battle over trans children's healthcare now. [unintelligible 00:04:52] Times' own reporting, there was a story in January about how GOP lawmakers are pushing anti-trans legislation around the country.

In that same article, there is the president of the American Principles Project, which The Times notes is one of the lobbying groups pushing this legislation. It's a right wing, Christian conservative group. Terry Schilling, the president of that group tells The Times that, I believe his words are that banning access to this care for trans children is a "political winner" and that the ultimate goal of their group and others is to use that as a stepping stone towards banning transition care for all.

Really, using trans kids and access to their health care, it's a fear-mongering tactic that The Times is feeding into with its coverage. These groups know that this is something that captures the public's attention. Even well-meaning people who wouldn't think of themselves as transphobic suddenly are like, "Oh, I don't know if kids can make these decisions. This might be bad. Maybe there are long-term ramifications. This care is all new and experimental. Trans children? I'm barely used to trans adults."

If you look back, like puberty blockers are, for example, one of the most hotly contested, supposedly politicized controversial medications in these debates. They've been used for cis and trans children alike for decades. That's another conversation. Gender-affirming care, it's something that cis people love as much as trans people, but that's for another time, maybe.

Hormone replacement therapy has been used since before World War II in various capacities. Gender-affirming surgeries, you have had people getting what you could call gender-affirming surgeries, World War I veterans getting phalloplasty in very similar methods over 100 years ago. That kind of context is not provided, it's just localized within this moment of now and debate and trans children, this new thing, trans people, this new phenomenon, when there really is a broader context The Times is not exactly capturing in its coverage.

The Times it's not only feeding into it by pushing these narratives, it's actually directly giving these lobbying groups ammunition through its coverage. In 2022, there were at least two federal court cases where The Times' coverage was used to defend laws against trans children's access to gender-affirming care.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We're going to take a pause right here, but we'll be back in just a moment with Harron Walker. Stick around.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Harron Walker is a co-author of the open letter from trans, contributors, journalists, and sources concerned about The New York Times coverage of trans communities. She's speaking with us about the letter. All right, Harron, you were talking to us about the ways that coverage that is either purportedly neutral or perhaps even seen as sort of pushing boundaries, doing better work around coverage for trans communities has actually been used in legal proceedings that have had negative effects. Can you say more?

Harron Walker: Absolutely. As I was saying, not only is The Times' coverage specifically, it's front page coverage of trans children and their access to gender-affirming health care, their right to safely transition on their own terms without permission from the state, from their schools, from their parents, other authority figures, beyond themselves. This coverage has actually been used in recent times in order to defend laws that are banning access to gender-affirming care for people under 18. Gender affirming care in this context meaning things like puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, gender-affirming surgery.

In 2022, there were at least two federal court cases in which The Times' coverage, not just its opinion pieces, but in fact, at least three reported editorial features that I found, they were cited in legal briefs pushed forward by state lawmakers, by right wing lobbying groups, used in order to defend the validity of these laws.

Specifically in the context that according to these groups and these lawmakers, The Times' coverage demonstrated that-- these are not my thoughts, but according to their arguments, they said that they demonstrated that trans people often do transition that there is a contagious element to young people transitioning or claiming trans identities. That trans people often experience regret, which is just not backed up by the actual statistics we have available.

There is a very real way in which The Times' coverage and framing a lot of the time on these issues, specifically with trans children, it does have real material stakes for the actual subjects of this coverage.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Clearly, I was so moved by the point you made earlier in our conversation, that part of the goal of this letter is, "Look, we're folks who are qualified, competent enough to have illustrated for you, done photography for you, written for you. We want to continue to be in relationship as content creators," in the context of The New York Times. Tell me the ways in which this letter begins to open a conversation for shifting and improving ideally what's happening at The New York Times around coverage for trans communities.

Harron Walker: Ideally, our hope is that this letter begins some kind of conversation or examination internally over editorial processes to examine the very clear, unethical anti-trans bias, as we lay it out in the letter, perhaps more realistically, at least according to the response we've already heard from The Times, not from Corbett, the standards editor, but from someone else within The Times, their response was addressed more so to GLAD who also issued a similar letter yesterday and made this point about how their organization is focused on advocacy. We are journalism, we have different missions.

They clarified, after a follow-up question to a reporter from, I believe it was Nieman Lab, that their response is the same to our letter, which is just a very, I feel, disrespectful dismissal because it paints us as advocates and not journalists, which we were journalists when they decided to publish us. Then suddenly, we're advocates because we are critiquing other journalism that they publish. In a very clear-headed, finely-tuned manner, we feel that they just didn't even take anything that we've said seriously.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Harron Walker is a freelance journalist with bylines in Out, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. Harron's also co-author of the open letter voicing concerns about New York Times coverage of trans communities. Again, thank you for taking the time with us.

Harron Walker: Thank you so much, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You can find the full letter from trans journalists and contributors up at thetakeaway.org and you'll also find there The New York Times response.

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