Last month, more than 1,200 New York Times contributors and 34,000 readers and media workers signed an open letter to the newspaper expressing concern over its coverage of trans, non-binary and gender-nonconforming people.Predictably, the Times denied all allegations of bias, saying its coverage “strives to explore, interrogate and reflect the experiences, ideas and debates in society”. But those who believe the Times’s coverage of trans lives is not just biased but also downright dangerous point to legal motions in several US states in support of anti-trans legislation that cite the newspaper’s reporting and pieces on its opinion and editorial pages.The dangers posed by the Times’s coverage are both horrifying and horrifyingly predictable. They are the inescapable outcome of enshrining “objectivity” as a guiding principle in United States media, creating an environment where telling “all sides” of the story can harm precisely those people whose stories we seek to tell.
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