In 2023, Erik Wemple of the Washington Post defended the New York Times against criticism of their decades of anti-transgender coverage.
Wemple’s opinion piece is a case study in how anti-trans journalists misunderstand and misrepresent trans and gender diverse minorities in their coverage, and how attitudes like Wemple’s keep trans journalists out of mainstream legacy media.
Background
Erik Wemple joined the Washington Post in 2011 and was a media critic there in 2023. See the main Erik Wemple page for additional biographical background.
Unlike the Times, the Post has generally limited anti-trans pieces like Wemple’s to the Opinion section. As an example, in 2022 the Post published an opinion piece by conservative therapists Laura Edwards-Leeper and Erica Anderson promoting their beliefs that “gender dysphoria” is a legitimate disease and that therapists like them should get paid to control who gets access to trans health services, not physicians.
Despite a few small issues like deadnaming, Post reporter Sara Solovitch covered this controversy fairly well in 2018. Solovitch centered the piece on a trans teen and spoke with Diane Ehrensaft, Joshua Safer, and Stephen Rosenthal, who represent the medical consensus, with Anderson as the conservative holdout.
2023 Post editorial
This section is being written.
The piece leads off with two tweets Wemple considers alarmist for their phrasing:
- “jeopardizing trans folks’ lives” [quoting Minton 2023]
- “genocide” [quoting Bond 2023]
In a great example of cis journalist groupthink, A.G. Sulzberger used the same journalistic and rhetorical tactic to lead off in the CJR:
- “putting lives at risk”
- “murder” [quoting Doyle 2023]
Journalists mentioned
- Joe Kahn and Katie Kingsbury
- Azeen Ghorayshi (twice)
- Emily Bazelon
- Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett
- Katie J.M. Baker
- Jake Silverstein
Critics mentioned
- Catherine Gordon
- Scott Leibowitz
- Kinnon MacKinnon
- Jules Gill-Peterson
- Beans Velocci
- Madeline Deutsch
- Sarah Kate Ellis / GLAAD
References
Klein, Charlotte (February 27, 2023). Inside the New York Times blowup over transgender coverage. Vanity Fair https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/new-york-times-trans-coverage-debate
Jones, Imara (July 17, 2023). S02E05: Capturing The New York Times. The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality https://translash.org/transcript-capturing-the-new-york-times/
Migdon, Brooke (February 15, 2023). NYT contributors blast paper’s coverage of transgender people. The Hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3859501-nyt-contributors-blast-papers-coverage-of-transgender-people/
Urquhart, Evan (June 15, 2023). Erik Wemple Doesn’t Think the New York Times is Biased. Assigned Media https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/erik-wemple-doesnt-think-the-new-york-times-is-biased
Bolies, Corbin (March 7, 2023). The New York Times’ Trans Coverage Debacle Was Years in the Making. The Daily Beast https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-new-york-times-trans-coverage-debacle-was-years-in-the-making
Bond, Chanea (). The @nytimes is an arm of the oppressive regime… https://twitter.com/heymrsbond/status/1626565133798412288
Minton, Evan ( ) The @nytimes is jeopardizing trans folks’ lives for click bait. Twitter https://twitter.com/EvanMMinton/status/1626462444003659776
Doyle, Jude Allison S. (February 27, 2023). What went wrong at the New York Times? Xtra https://xtramagazine.com/power/what-went-wrong-at-the-new-york-times-246409
Sulzberger, A.G. (April 4, 2022). 2022 State of The Times Remarks. New York Times Company https://www.nytco.com/press/2022-state-of-the-times-remarks/
Walker et al. (February 15, 2023 ff.). [Open letter to Philip B. Corbett] https://nytletter.com/
Sulzberger AG (May 15, 2023). Journalism’s Essential Value. Columbia Journalism Review https://www.cjr.org/special_report/ag-sulzberger-new-york-times-journalisms-essential-value-objectivity-independence.php
Wemple, Erik (June 15, 2023 ) Opinion: A second look at the attacks on the New York Times’s trans coverage. Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/15/new-york-times-transgender-coverage-controversy/
McKenzie Beard (May 16, 2022). Some clinicians stress mental health care for kids questioning their gender. Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/16/some-clinicians-stress-mental-health-care-kids-questioning-their-gender/