A mobile billboard stationed outside The New York Times headquarters today posed a pointed question: Why won’t the newspaper meet with leaders from the transgender community? The public display marks two years since a coalition of more than 100 organizations, leaders, and notables sent an open letter to the Times requesting action to address irresponsible and prejudicial reporting that fails to include transgender people.
Following years of high-profile, biased, and inaccurate coverage of transgender people in the Times, two years ago this week (February 15, 2023), a coalition of more than 100 LGBTQ and allied organizations, leaders, and notables, sent an open letter to the Times with three requests: that the Times stops printing biased anti-trans stories, immediately; that the Times listen to trans people and holds a meeting with trans community leaders within two months; and that the Times hire at least four full-time trans writers and editors within three months.
Two years later, none of these requests have been fulfilled. Additionally, the coalition has yet to directly hear back from the Times about this letter. Instead, the coalition has seen statements in the press from Times executives and PR staff, which often conflated the coalition’s efforts with a wholly separate effort from hundreds of Times contributors, who also strongly critiqued the Times’ trans coverage. This conflation appeared to serve the goal of delegitimizing their own contributors and dismissing their critiques as activism.
GLAAD released a statement today on behalf of the broader coalition: “Two years ago this week, a strong coalition called out the Times’ pattern of biased, inaccurate coverage of trans people, and asked for fairness and accuracy. The most straightforward of the coalition’s asks was for the newspaper to simply meet with leaders from the trans community. There is no ethical reason that a media outlet covering a marginalized community should refuse to meet with that community, especially if coverage has a pattern of bias and inaccuracy.”
Biased reporting not only misinforms readers but also fuels harmful policies and social attitudes.
The statement acknowledges some recent improvements in coverage, but emphasized that significant issues persist: “While the Times has published guest essays from trans voices in recent weeks, and some recent coverage of trans people and issues has been well received by the community, there is still much work to be done to ensure unbiased, accurate coverage, and to represent appropriate trans people and experts as sources and as staff members. Trans community leaders remain on standby to share facts and expertise with the Times, as our organizations have done with so many other mainstream media outlets.”
A 2024 analysis from GLAAD and Media Matters found that a majority of Times articles about anti-trans legislation did not include the perspective of one trans person.
The paper continues to publish coverage of trans people with mixed amounts of bias and inaccuracies. An editorial board piece about attacks on trans people published this past Sunday, February 10, 2025, was widely critiqued by trans people and allies as disingenuous for omitting the Times’ role in creating the current culture of anti-trans attacks. The piece also continued to inaccurately frame being trans as “a debate” and question best practice healthcare and the rights of trans youth to play soccer with their friends at school.
Trans journalist Erin Reed wrote, of Sunday’s piece: “What the piece conveniently omits, however, is the Times’ own complicity. No other major paper has done more to legitimize the very arguments fueling these attacks than The New York Times itself.”
A January 2024 expose by The Flaw magazine looked at the Times’ “distinct culpability” in the paper’s ongoing trans coverage, citing journalist Maximillian Alvarez: “the Times knows damn well that its articles are being cited in state legislatures around the country as justification for the hundreds of genocidal, anti-trans anti-queer bills that are being introduced left and right.”
Other community and organizational responses to the Times’ years of biased, inaccurate coverage have appeared in Slate.com, AssignedMedia.org, Them.us, USA Today, MediaMatters.org, and other outlets.
Trans leaders remain ready to engage with the Times to share facts and expertise, and foster greater inclusion.
