Nearly 200 NYT contributors sign letter bashing paper as following ‘far-right hate groups’ on trans issue

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Nearly 200 liberal New York Times contributors signed an open letter bashing their own news outlet for its recent coverage of trans issues.

The letter claimed that the paper’s coverage of the "propriety of medical care for trans children" has featured "an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language."

Those who signed the letter alleged that the outlet has followed "the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy."

As Fox News Digital reported last November, the Times faced "blow back" for one of its recent reports "delving into the potential consequences of puberty blockers." 

The New York Times Building in Midtown Manhattan.? (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)

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This blow back has now materialized in a February 15 letter signed by prominent lefty journalists and authors, including Ed Yong, Lucy Sante, Roxane Gay, and Rebecca Solnit.  

Personally addressed to the Times’ associate managing editor for standards, Phillip B. Corbett, the letter alerted him to "serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non?-?binary, and gender-nonconforming people."

The aggrieved liberal authors noted that though "plenty of reporters at the Times cover trans issues fairly," they are "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."

According to the letter, the paper has recently "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."

Thus, it claimed that Times has impeded upon its own "editorial guidelines" which "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.’" 

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People gather in support of transgender youth during a rally at the Utah State Capitol Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, in Salt Lake City.? (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

It cited several articles that allegedly ran afoul of proper practices, including, Emily Bazelon’s article "The Battle Over Gender Therapy," "When Students Change Gender Identity and Parents Don’t Know" by Katie Baker, and "How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War" by Ross Douthat.

The letter lamented that several of these pieces were used in "an amicus brief in defense of Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act," a bill that "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."

Further, the letter accused The New York Times of following the "lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy warranting new, punitive legislation."

It declared, "Puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and gender?-?affirming surgeries have been standard forms of care for cis and trans people alike for decades," and argued that the Times once also helped to demonize homosexuality in years past. 

It noted, "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."

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The authors and contributors concluded with an accusation that the paper does not value trans individuals, including its own writers in that category: "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."

It added, "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."

Zee Kilpack is photographed at a rally where hundreds gathered in support of transgender youth at the Utah State Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, in Salt Lake City. Utah lawmakers on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023, gave final approval for a measure that would ban most transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming health care like surgery or puberty blockers. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)