The New York Times Is About to Do More Damage to Trans People

The paper's six-part podcast "The Protocol" looks to continue a pattern of coverage so problematic that over 1,200 of its own contributors have criticized it.

The New York Times has announced that "The Protocol," a six-part podcast series about transgender healthcare for minors, will debut on June 5 — marking the start of Pride Month. The timing feels deliberate, and given the paper's track record on trans coverage, advocacy groups and transgender people themselves are rightfully concerned about what's coming.

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To state the obvious: this isn't about being "too sensitive" or unable to handle legitimate journalism. This is about a pattern of coverage so problematic that it prompted over 1,200 New York Times contributors, including myself, to sign an open letter in February 2023 criticizing the paper's "editorial bias" in transgender reporting. It's about coverage so skewed that attorneys general in multiple states have cited NYT articles in legal briefs to justify criminalizing gender-affirming care.

The podcast, which will examine "how the care got pulled into a political fight that could end it altogether," already reveals its framing problem in that description. Transgender healthcare didn't get "pulled into" a political fight — it became the target of a coordinated campaign by anti-trans activists and Republican politicians. But the Times' language suggests this is some kind of natural, inevitable conflict rather than a deliberate assault on medical care.

The Times' transgender coverage problems didn't start yesterday. For years, the paper has systematically elevated fringe voices while sidelining medical consensus, used misleading statistical framing, and amplified debunked theories — all while presenting this as balanced journalism. Take Emily Bazelon's June 2022 New York Times Magazine piece, "The Battle Over Gender Therapy." Within months of publication, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge were citing it in legal briefs supporting anti-trans legislation. The article failed to properly identify sources' connections to anti-trans advocacy groups and used dehumanizing language like "patient zero" to describe transgender youth.