“The View from the Top” panel at The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists’ National Convention this year convened an array of industry leaders to discuss the current state of the news media in “one of the toughest years for the industry since the Great Recession.” The topics of discussion included “declining trust in the media,” and a subsequent question about mainstream media lending equal credence to right-wing detractors on transgender issues put an editor representing the New York Times on the defensive.

“We have the ability at The Advocate to not have to both-sides certain stories, like whether or not gender-affirming care and trans women in sports are scientifically sound, and there are some mainstream outlets that try to both-sides that,” The Advocate’s former editor-in-chief Tracy Gilchrist said. “And I would love to hear from those folks how you are combating that in your newsrooms, because it’s misinformation.”

New York Times assistant managing editor Sam Sifton jumped at the question, saying, “As a mainstream news organization that covers those issues and many more, I don’t think we’re engaging in both-sidesism. I think what we’re doing is trying to embody an ideal of independent journalism … that posits that our job, our mission in seeking the truth and helping people understand the world, is going to prove to be a disappointment to those who find our article to not match their worldview, to not match what they believe.”

 

Sifton then compared the Times’ coverage of gender-affirming care to its recent coverage of the war in Gaza, for which the paper has come under fire after quantitative analysis from The Intercept found a pro-Israel bias, as well as a leaked internal memo advising against the use of the terms “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “occupied territory.” 

“I’ve got to say it’s tough for those of us at the Times because it’s unsettling a little bit, it’s a lonely feeling sometimes,” Sifton said of criticism that the paper’s Gaza coverage has been anti-Palestinian. “And what it requires of us to do is not both-sidesism. What it requires of us to do is to go out and gather as many points of view and as many fact points as we can and, as we say, try and help people understand.”

Sifton added, “The notion that what we’re doing in our quest for an independent journalism is going to come as comfort to The Advocate, where it’s right there in the name, it won’t happen, or it won’t happen comfortably.”

In February 2023, The New York Times reprimanded its own staff and contributors after several members signed onto a pair of open letters expressing grievances with the paper’s transgender coverage, dismissing those calls for change as “protests organized by advocacy groups.”

Media Matters and GLAAD found that 66% of New York Times articles about anti-trans legislation from February 15, 2023, through February 15, 2024 failed to quote a trans or gender-nonconforming person, and 18% quoted misinformation from anti-trans activists without fact-checking or context. Another six articles failed to clarify the extremist histories of anti-trans sources.

This year alone, the Times has quoted a psychologist who has compared homosexuality to pedophilia to fearmonger against gender-affirming care, and published a 4,500-word column on the subject addled with misinformation and dubious sources. Internal messages of dissent over the column were also deleted from the Slack channel for the paper’s LGBTQ employee resource group, of which Sifton is the executive sponsor.

The editor seemed to allude to this situation and others later in the panel, saying, “Slack isn’t a place where you can put your fellow colleagues on blast, particularly when there may be some gaps in understanding how the work is done in the newsroom.”

Gender-affirming care is currently banned for youth in 26 states despite its overwhelming support “from every major medical institution and leading world health authority,” from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the World Health Organization. The future of gender-affirming care remains in the uncertain hands of the courts, with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals recently allowing Florida’s previously stricken ban to be enacted, while the Supreme Court is poised to decide the fate of Tennessee’s ban, and subsequently all others, by next year.