TRANS COMMUNITY LEADERS ASKED THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR A MEETING 2 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK: STILL NO MEETING

“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.”

Thursday, February 13, 2025 – Today, a mobile billboard appears in front of the New York Times headquarters in New York City with one message: Why won’t the newspaper meet with leaders from the transgender community? (Visual assets available on GLAAD’s social media @glaad and here.) Trans community leaders are eager to educate journalists and leaders at the Times.

After years of high-profile biased, inaccurate articles and opinion pieces about transgender people in the Times, two years ago this week (February 15, 2023), a coalition of 100+ lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) and allied organizations, leaders, and notables sent an open letter to the Times, with three asks:

• Stop printing biased anti-trans stories, immediately.
• Listen to trans people: hold a meeting with trans community leaders within two months.
• Hire multiple full-time trans writers and editors within three months.

Two years later, none of these asks 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, dismissing their critiques as activism.

Statement from a GLAAD spokesperson:
“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.

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.”

See here for additional community and organizational responses to the Times’ years of biased, inaccurate coverage, and here for the list of 100+ organizations, leaders, and notables who sent the 2023 letter.