Why 1,000 New York Times employees accuse transphobia

After a scandal surrounding a guest post that led to internal and external protests and the resignation of its opinion leader James Bennet in the summer of 2020, the New York Times has had to deal with a new wave of criticism of its reporting. At that time it was about a comment by Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who advocated the use of the military to ensure internal security, because the murder of George Floyd had led to massive unrest in cities. Now it's about the newspaper's reporting on transgender issues. This is biased and promotes prejudice.

According to reports, around 1,000 people who have previously worked for the New York Times as guest authors or freelancers have criticized the newspaper in an open letter. In the past eight months, articles with a volume of around 15,000 words (that would be around 2,000 lines in WELT) have appeared on the front page, in which the question of whether medical care for transgender children is appropriate has been addressed. The proportion of these children is very small, and the reporting is driven by an agenda.

The newspaper did not confirm or deny the scope of the articles mentioned in the letter. According to the information provided by the initiators, the letter was also signed by more than 20,000 people, including subscribers to the newspaper.

In recent years, the letter to Philip B. Corbett, the newspaper's ethics director, said the Times has treated the issue of gender diversity "with an eerily familiar concoction of pseudoscience and euphemism -charged language". Reports on transgender children have omitted important information about the sources of the reports. Some articles in the newspaper were used for "anti-trans" criticism, for example by Republican politicians.

This letter was accompanied by another protest note attacking the New York Times' "irresponsible" reporting. The sender of this letter is the lobby group GLAAD, which claims to be the world's largest advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and trans people. The letter cites the New York Times' "lies, prejudice, marginal theories, and dangerous inaccuracies" about trans people -- and recalls biased reports about the gay rights movement since the 1960s.

A spokesman for the New York Times responded to the allegations that the reporting was "nuanced and fair" - and gave examples of his own. However, the mission of a lobby group like GLAAD and a newspaper like the Times are different. A news medium is about independent reports on issues, "challenges and prejudices" and the question of how a society deals with issues such as transgender. Apart from that, it does not correspond to the ethical rules for reporters to get involved in campaigns: "We have clear regulations that prohibit Times journalists from publicly attacking the journalism of colleagues or signaling approval for outside attacks."

For its part, GLAAD is calling on The Times to stop publishing "biased anti-trans posts," to hold regular meetings with trans community opinion leaders, and to hire at least four full-time trans people.

Whether and in what form the newspaper's reporting is biased and actually incorrect can only be found out by means of a detailed content analysis. According to the freelancer's letter, there are definitely "fair" articles on the subject in the "Times".

However, as in the Bennet case, the desire and will of authors and lobby groups to have a greater influence on the content orientation and positioning of the media is evident here. An op-ed in Britain's Guardian argued that the Times ignored the lack of a clear distinction between advocacy and journalism. In the English original, the “Guardian” comment probably deliberately says “advocacy” and not “activism”.

This assertion lies at the core of a conflict in journalism that is likely to gain in importance in the future. On the surface it is about the question of how balanced and objective journalism can and must be. While the "classical" school insists on the greatest possible objectivity, objectivity skeptics follow a kind of journalistic ethics. Below the surface, however, it is about the question of which external and internal processes and motives influence the reporting of a medium - and what journalism is good for in the first place.

The "Media Week" is a podcast about the world of media and its makers. Christian Meier, editor at WELT, and Stefan Winterbauer, editor-in-chief of the industry service Meedia, talk about the most important topics of the week every Friday. Background, analytical, entertaining.