Sorry, Sulzberger—NYT’s Anti-Trans ‘News’ Is Neither True Nor Important

A.G. Sulzberger, hereditary leader of the New York Times, argued in CJR (5/15/23) that his newspaper has to publish so many anti-trans stories because they are “true” and “important.”

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger (CJR, 5/15/23) has weighed in on the ongoing debate among legacy journalists about whether they ought to pursue “objectivity” and what the  proper goals of journalism ought to be.

His piece is more than 10,000 words long, and mostly it’s the expected Timesian defense against those critical of its “both sides” approach. But there’s a section towards the end that caught my eye, in which Sulzberger addresses the recent vocal criticism (of which FAIR was a part) of the paper’s coverage of transgender and non-binary people and issues.

The section begins:

Another line of criticism asserts that when journalists report information that makes a negative outcome more likely, they are complicit in that outcome. This argument typically takes two forms: that news organizations should not publish information that bad actors might misuse and that they should not offer airtime to views that should be excised from the public square.

“In general,” he writes,

independent reporters and editors should ask, “Is it true? Is it important?” If the answer to both questions is yes, journalists should be profoundly skeptical of any argument that favors censoring or skewing what they’ve learned based on a subjective view about whether it may yield a damaging outcome.

In Sulzberger’s telling, the Times is reporting perfectly true and important stories that critics want to see skewed and censored—”excised from the public square”!—for the misguided reason that “bad actors” happen to be misusing that excellent reporting, to ends whose damage is merely “subjective.”

Stop skewing the news

The state of Texas entered a widely debunked New York Times article (6/19/22) as evidence in support of its claim that gender-affirming healthcare is “child abuse” (Texas Observer, 7/22/22). Strangely, the Times has never reported on this use of its journalism.

It’s true that bad actors are explicitly using Times reporting to advance their anti-trans agenda, citing it to justify restricting and even criminalizing gender-affirming healthcare for youth—though the Times has yet to directly acknowledge that in its own paper. And trans youth, who already have much higher rates of suicidality than their cisgender peers, are both already experiencing clear negative mental health outcomes from this campaign, and are almost certain to experience negative mental health outcomes from the loss of access to gender-affirming care. But apparently to the Times, whether that’s “damaging” is merely subjective.

Critics like FAIR aren’t asking the Times to “skew” or “censor” its trans-related coverage. We’re asking for the Times to center trans people in that coverage, and stop skewing it toward those spinning misleading anti-trans narratives.

Specifically looking at trans coverage, Sulzberger claims:

The Times has covered the surge of discrimination, threats and violence faced by trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people, including the rapidly growing number of legislative efforts attacking their rights. We’ve also covered the many ways in which people challenging gender norms are gaining recognition and breaking barriers in the United States and around the world. Yet our critics overlook these articles—and there are hundreds of them—to instead focus on a small number of pieces that explore particularly sensitive questions that society is actively working through, but which some would prefer for the Times to treat as settled.

Failing the test

As it happens, FAIR recently took a close look at a full year of the New York Times‘ trans-related coverage—not every article, but every one it put on its front page, which are the ones that the paper chose to foreground. FAIR’s study (5/11/23) reveals Sulzberger’s argument to be a misrepresentation.

FAIR (5/11/23) found that two-thirds of the family members of trans youth quoted in front-page New York Times stories were nonsupportive of their  child’s transition.

It’s not untrue that the Times has produced a great deal of coverage of trans issues, and some has certainly focused on the right-wing campaign against trans people. But the articles the paper featured in its prime front-page real estate have completely failed the “Is it true? Is it important?” test Sulzberger proposes.

Looking at coverage from April 2022 through March 2023, the Times only put trans-related issues on its front page nine times. And the Times hasn’t been highlighting the “surge of discrimination, threats and violence” there:

Only two of the paper’s nine front-page headlines (“Swimming Body Bars Most Transgender Women,” 6/20/22; “Roe’s Reversal Stokes Attacks on Gay Rights,” 7/23/22) even began to hint at the dire situation faced by trans people today as a result of the war waged against them by the far right. Even these fell woefully short, with the second of the two not even naming trans people. Neither headlined the perspectives of trans people in the United States or those fighting alongside them.

Meanwhile, we found that

six of the Times‘ nine front-page articles about trans issues wove narratives of transition being risky, likely to be regretted, or prematurely forced onto unwitting youth (9/26/22, 11/22/22, 1/23/23), and/or of trans people threatening others’ rights, such as those of cisgender women and parents (5/29/22, 6/9/22, 7/21/22, 1/23/23). These six articles also consumed far more space in the paper than the other three, averaging 2,826 words versus 1,636, suggesting which kinds of stories about trans people the paper believes are most worthy of deep investigation.

To evaluate these by Sulzberger’s criteria: Is it true? Well, in terms of transition being risky, likely to be regretted, or prematurely forced onto unwitting youth, it’s not true. As we explain in the study, the Times paints a seriously skewed picture of the dangers of transition, which is far less risky than forcing trans youth to conform to a socially assigned gender identity.

And sure, some cisgender women and some parents of trans kids feel their rights are being trampled on when trans people are acknowledged and granted the same rights as their peers. But that leads us to the second question: Is it important? In this instance, is the right to exclude trans people more important than the right of trans people to be included?

This is where the illusion of “objectivity” falls apart. The Times has made clear that it thinks these kinds of stories are absolutely important, since they are the ones it has put on its front page—in fact, more important than the stories about attacks on trans people’s rights and existence.

How is that not ‘legitimizing’?

Sulzberger wasn’t done:

The second bad outcome that is often raised is “platforming,” the concept that including people with bad or dangerous views in articles—or allowing them to write guest essays in the opinion section—makes the world a worse or more dangerous place. The central concern in this argument is that the very act of examining or sharing disliked or repugnant opinions, without explicitly condemning them, amounts to promoting and legitimizing them.

It’s a bit of a head-scratcher. If you, a newspaper with millions of subscribers, share a repugnant or dangerous opinion without condemning it, you might not be communicating that you necessarily agree with it, but you most certainly are promoting and legitimizing it.

After Sen. Tom Cotton called for sending in troops against Black Lives Matter protesters, Sulzberger (Vanity Fair, 6/8/20) acknowledged the obvious point that not every idea deserves space on the New York Times op-ed page.

Sulzberger appeared to recognize that when he apologized for the paper’s decision to publish Sen. Tom Cotton’s op-ed calling for US troops to be used against Black Lives Matter protesters. At the time, Sulzberger (Vanity Fair, 6/8/20) called it “contemptuous” and “needlessly and deliberately inflammatory.” Obviously Sulzberger does not believe that every view deserves space in his paper’s opinion section—and so with the views that he does include, he is necessarily drawing a line that includes those perspectives among those that deserve a prominent platform. That’s what “legitimizing” means.

It’s an important power that the New York Times has, and it ought to be exercised thoughtfully—rather than hand-waving the problem away by asserting that those with different ideas about which views should be legitimized are censors.

Likewise with the questions of which claims can go unchallenged in the Times‘ news section. These are fundamentally subjective, political decisions. But Sulzberger still refuses to recognize the Times as political:

In the long run, ignoring societal disagreements or actively suppressing certain facts and viewpoints—even with the best of intentions—turns the press into an overtly political actor.

This brings us back to the question of the role of the newspaper and the folly of aspiring to objectivity. Journalists and leaders at the Times make decisions every day about which opinions to publish, which stories to put on the front page and which sources to lean on to shape a narrative. Pretending to be apolitical may serve the Times‘ bottom line, in its efforts to appeal to a certain kind of subscriber—and advertiser—but it does nothing to erase the paper’s complicity in the right-wing campaign against trans people.

FEATURED IMAGE: New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger.

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