NYT letter about the paper's coverage of trans people

Wemple's opinion in the Washington Post:

"The New York Times is racked with internal dissent over internal dissent — a development stemming from multiple open letters sent last week to newspaper management taking issue with the paper’s recent coverage of transgender youth.

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The NewsGuild of New York, which represents Times journalists, tells the Erik Wemple Blog that Times employees have been called into 'investigatory meetings' related to their participation as signatories. An informed source says that disciplinary actions are underway.

The tough talk from management prompted a rebuke from Susan DeCarava, president of the NewsGuild, which is in the midst of contentious collective bargaining negotiations with the Times. The coherence of the don’t-attack-your-colleagues rule is questionable, noted DeCarava, since the paper in 2020 published a critique by op-ed columnist Bret Stephens of the Times’s own 1619 Project."

His conclusion: "Though a general prohibition on criticizing the work of colleagues is destined to fail, newspaper leaders are correct to respond firmly to an advocacy petition. Journalists, after all, are paid to cover such efforts, not join them."

— "The New York Times newsroom is splintering over a trans coverage debate." (unpaywalled) Opinion by Erik Wemple. Washington Post. 24 Feb 2023.

To which I commented:

"Re: Mr. Wemple's conclusion: "Though a general prohibition on criticizing the work of colleagues is destined to fail, newspaper leaders are correct to respond firmly to an advocacy petition. Journalists, after all, are paid to cover such efforts, not join them." I'm struggling to understand why, if the coverage is the problem, more coverage is the answer. (Including meta-coverage of other people's advocacy about coverage.) The NY Times coverage of trans issues is biased, damaging, and inaccurate. The exact problems with the coverage have been pointed out many times by many people, including myself, so I won't repeat those complaints here. At least some Times employees agree that issues affecting trans people should be reported on differently, but the Times is saying "no" and is demonstrably not paying anyone to do this coverage appropriately. So what recourse is available to journalists who disagree on the facts as they're being reported and also as a matter of conscience regarding cis people's treatment of trans people? How can institutional change be achieved?"

And then I wrote "Why There’s Still An Argument About NYT Coverage of Trans People". It's a 5-minute read on Medium.

Here's the NYT Archives link she provided to the Buckley column.

This continues:

August 2023 update:

Parker Molloy:

"The Times is, sadly, a joke. Just like when Erick Erickson shot holes in a Times editorial calling for gun control in the wake of a 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino and was later rewarded with space in the paper to make a very laughable case for trying to find 'common ground' with people who hold differing opinions (Erickson has since suggested murdering his political opponents by throwing them out of helicopters), the Times has once again debased itself by gifting Coulter a platform to promote her Substack."

— "Our Homelander Moment, Our Homelander World: Ann Coulter is writing for the New York Times. How did we get here?" Parker Molloy. Substack. August 23, 2023.

GLAAD tweeted August 24:

That URL on the van is: glaad.org/nytimes

Parker Molloy says: "On the topic of trans health care, the Times response to criticisms of its activism was… to complain that everyone else was an activist, not them."

A century and a half ago the NYT was publishing articles saying the North should stop talking about slavery and for sure the South would get its own act together as soon as the North ceased to be so annoying.

In the Intelligencer (New York Magazine), Jonathan Chait argues that trans people are kind of to blame.

Similarly, see: Progressives need to engage with the specific questions about youth gender care: Abstract values of freedom and equality don't deliver all the answers, Matthew Yglesias: February 16, 2023

"The only thing I want to see from these newly expanded staff bios is somebody finally disclosing which writers and editors at the Times are trying to litigate their fights with their gender-questioning kids in the pages of the newspaper" (Tom Scocca, February 4, 2024, on Bsky)

Washington Post reporter Erik Wemple on this topic.