Lineart of microphones over a trans flag
Molly Butler / Media Matters 

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Mainstream media uplifts trans voices to call out the flood of anti-trans political ads

Fair and inclusive coverage of trans people has been lacking this year, but now mainstream media are passing the mic

Special Programs LGBTQ

Written by Vesper Henry

Research contributions from Alyssa Tirrell

Published

As election season nears its end, anti-trans political ads have surged, with advertisers pouring as much as $82 million into ads that now air even during high-profile broadcasts like NFL games. Fox News has mirrored this bigotry. In October alone, the outlet aired at least 47 weekday segments about trans athletes, representing more than a 683% increase from September. But amid a wave of negative portrayals, mainstream media have recently begun featuring trans voices to counter this harmful rhetoric.

  • Trans journalists, activists, and legislators made appearances across cable and broadcast networks in the last weeks of October

  • Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Trans Equality, emphasized on CNN that these ads aim to drive a wedge among voters, exploiting the fact that few Americans personally know a trans person. Only about 30% of Americans report having a transgender person in their lives, which is correlated with a higher likelihood of supporting transgender rights. Heng-Lehtinen spoke personally to this phenomenon: “My family are all Republican, and they are lifelong conservatives. And then I came out as transgender, and it was a shock to them, just like it is for many people. … Thankfully, they stood by me. They may not have really understood what it meant to be transgender yet, but they knew that family is family and parents don't abandon their children.” [CNN, CNN This Morning Weekend, 10/20/24; Advocates for Trans Equality, accessed 10/30/24; Data for Progress, 10/11/23; Public Religion Research Institute, 8/24/23; Pew Research Center, 6/28/22]

  • From the October 20, 2024, edition of CNN This Morning Weekend

  • Journalist Parker Molloy spoke with CNN’s Jake Tapper about the role that trans people’s participation in sports plays in building those personal connections. “For the most part, sports is where people come together to form a community, to play with their friends,” Molloy said, “And these laws, pushing to divide trans people out of this, is essentially saying, ‘You don’t belong, you’re okay to bully, you’re okay to exclude.’ And I think that that’s shameful.” Molloy also emphasized that trans issues are a low priority for most voters. [CNN, The Lead with Jake Tapper, 10/29/24; Data for Progress, 10/24/24]

  • From the October 29, 2024, edition of CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper

  • “They’re trying to convince the public that trans people are scary in order to motivate Republican votes, and it just doesn’t work,” nonbinary journalist and Vice editor Nico Lang told MSNBC. Lang also noted that past emphasis on trans issues contributed to conservatives “underperform[ing]” in 2020 and 2022. This was the case in the 2022 midterm elections and Herschel Walker’s subsequent runoff, as well as for an Ohio ballot initiative in 2023. “Americans, as you see there, they don’t care about this. They care about issues that impact their lives,” Lang said. “They care about their trans friends. They care about their trans neighbors. And we just need to move on from this.” [MSNBC, Alex Witt Reports, 10/20/24; Media Matters, 11/10/22, 12/8/22, 8/9/23; Vice, accessed 10/31/24]

  • From the October 20, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Alex Witt Reports

  • Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr stressed that the anti-trans culture war was not a pressing concern for the average voter. “It distracts us from important issues. That they’re trying to say that a teacher’s performing a surgery, they’re ignoring the fact we’re drastically underpaying teachers across this country. That is a far more salient issue,” Zephyr said, referencing Trump's false claim that children were undergoing gender-affirming surgery at school. [MSNBC, Ayman, 10/20/24; Media Matters, 9/10/24]

  • From the October 20, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Ayman

  • “I think it’s an expensive tactic to take cheap shots at the trans community,” activist Raquel Willis said on ABC. Willis highlighted a GOP pattern of painting marginalized groups as “villains,” pointing to recent attacks on Haitians and migrants. [ABC News, ABC News Live, 10/22/24; Media Matters, 9/17/24, 10/9/24]

  • From the October 22, 2024, edition of ABC News Live

  • Gina Chua, executive editor at Semafor, critiqued the ads in a New York Times op-ed, arguing that they paint trans acceptance as “far outside what is normal.” Chua noted that social attitudes evolve, pointing to progress on interracial marriage, gay marriage, and suffrage as evidence that one day, trans people might also be seen as “ordinary.” [The New York Times, 10/23/24]

  • This brief surge of representation offered a counter to harmful narratives after media outlets consistently lacked trans voices throughout 2023 and the first half of 2024

  • Mainstream outlets remain far from balanced. In the first six months of 2024, just 8% of mainstream cable segments on anti-trans legislation featured trans voices. Only one openly trans person appeared in coverage that mentioned fatal violence against the trans community in 2023, with a majority of coverage from MSNBC, CNN, and broadcast networks sensationalizing the death of Banko Brown. In print, The New York Times neglected to quote trans people in 66% of its stories and failed to correct anti-trans misinformation in 18% of them from February 2023 to February 2024. [Media Matters, 8/1/24, 3/14/24, 3/26/24]