Bias at NYT: Trans Former Employee Speaks Out
Billie Sweeney is a trans journalist who was an editor for the New York Times until last year. Here, she recalls the losing battle for the soul of the paper of record.
by Evan Urquhart
Disclaimer: Billie Jean Sweeney has been assisting Assigned Media as a volunteer editor since November 2024.
In November 2021, Billie Jean Sweeney’s life was good. She adored her job, and her team at the New York Times international desk, where she’d just been promoted from working nights to day assignment editor. Over time, however, Sweeney became concerned at the bias shown in coverage of the trans community. Her community. For years she engaged with management, believing she could help the paper get trans stories right. Now, looking back, she’s not convinced she ever had a chance.
Transitioning on the job in 2019 had gone well for Sweeney, even though it made her the first publicly trans journalist at the paper since Donna Cartwright in the 1990s. So, when she was brought in to consult with management about the paper’s transgender coverage, she did so without fear.
Sweeney retired early from the NYT in June. In recent months, she’s become increasingly outspoken in her criticisms of her former employer on social media. The coverage of trans issues at NYT, she says, reflects a hostile stance towards transgender people that comes directly from the top.
A Change in Tone at NYT
What, exactly, went wrong at the New York Times? It’s a question that’s been asked, analyzed, reported about, and advocated on, and disputed by spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander, who emailed a detailed response to Assigned Media’s reporting.
“I would outright disagree with any claims of hostility, skepticism or bias in our coverage, including from Times leadership,” Stadtlander wrote. “We’ve reported fully and fairly on transgender issues ranging from challenges and prejudice faced by the community to the fight for expanding rights and freedoms to open debates about care. Our coverage has been rigorously reported and edited, respectful of the people we’re covering and sensitive to the moment.”
The people being covered, transgender people, tend to disagree. Activist, writer, and Assigned Media contributor Riki Wilchins wrote an entire book exploring the history of transgender coverage at NYT, detailing how it has changed over time. She says NYT’s coverage of the trans community has gotten much worse in the past few years
“As transgender people first became more visible, they [NYT] made all the usual mistakes that news organizations make. They’d misgender people, they’d use deadnames for people who had died. They had a particular fascination with trans street women, who they would kind of snark at without actually covering why so many trans women of color ended up on the street,” said Wilchins. “And then, they got better. Editorial standards showed up, the language became better, and they started covering trans people just like any other news story.”
For her book, Wilchins read and categorized every story relating to the trans community in the history of the NYT. She says there was a period when NYT led the industry in sensitive and appropriate coverage of trans rights. The first signs of an editorial swing towards hostility to the trans community began to show up in the opinion section in 2015. Opinion began featuring more anti-trans views, such as this essay from June 6 by director Elinor Burkett. Entitled “What Makes a Woman,” Burkett complains that trans women represent an attack on cis women’s ability to define themselves.
Another notable thing to happen at the paper in 2015 was that A. G. Sulzberger became Associate Editor for Newsroom Strategy.
True journalism fans know that the Sulzberger family’s ownership of the paper dates to the late 1800s. In 2015 it was clear that a Sulzberger would be the future, not just the past, but it was not yet clear which particular scion would take over from the leader of the company for more than 25 years, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.
A. G. Sulzberger’s time at newsroom strategy resulted in a successful plan to make the paper less reliant on advertising, moving it towards an online subscription-led model. In 2017 it was announced that he would be taking over from his father as publisher starting in early 2018.
A controversial aspect of A. G. Sulzberger’s vision for the NYT was reported on in a podcast deep dive into anti-trans bias at the paper by TransLash Media in 2024. TransLash reported A. G. sought to shift the paper’s reputation for being politically aligned with liberals in order to add more conservatives to the subscriber base. The link between the desire at the top to court conservative audiences and anti-trans bias in the coverage remains unproven, and the New York Times has declined to comment on the reporting about A. G.’s audience strategy, to TransLash then, or to Assigned now.
NYT Attempts to Recruit Trans Journalists
One piece of this larger story are the efforts to recruit trans journalists to the newsroom, which did not result in any hires. Sweeney was involved in this effort from the start.
“It was the top people, the management people, who reached out to me, initially,” said Sweeney. She says that she was invited to comment on the paper’s trans coverage and participated in two meetings in late 2021, meeting with Dean Baquet, then the executive editor, and others who seemed interested in her perspectives, and in having more trans journalists at NYT.
“The first time I remember being contacted, it was via email, about Jesse Singal’s book review [of Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality]. They asked me what I thought, and I told them.”
What Sweeney thought was that Singal had used the review to launder his bigoted views on trans people into the paper.
“I now think what they were hoping to find with me, and why they sought me out initially, was because they thought I was somebody who’s going to be reasonable and side with them,” said Sweeney. “When they heard me say, well, you’re not covering this fairly, they went in a different direction.”
This feels clear in hindsight. But at the time, Sweeney believed that she and management and every other journalist in the organization shared the goals of creating top-quality journalism. To that end she participated in a meeting with top management about a documentary on J. K. Rowling that was ultimately shelved, as well as a meeting on recruiting trans journalists. The latter led to further meetings and email exchanges with managing editor Carolyn Ryan aimed at bringing trans journalists into the newsroom.
Beyond the meetings Sweeney participated in, the NYT in 2021 gave every impression of being an organization that wanted to bring trans reporters on board. NYT’s director of recruitment, Keiko Morris, met with representatives of the Trans Journalists Association and with reporter Kate Sosin of the 19th. Like Sweeney, Sosin remembers sharing many names, and not seeing any hiring as a result. Sosin’s interactions with NYT recruiters were first reported in 2023 by Jude Doyle, for Xtra. More recently, Sosin spoke with Assigned Media.
“All I know is, after several months of sending people over and over and over again, I gave up,” said Sosin. “I went to [the] NLGJA [conference] in L. A. this year and I saw Keiko and I gave her such a hard time, mostly because she’s really a nice person. I said, Keiko, I just want to congratulate you on all the trans people you’ve hired at the New York Times. And she was laughing.”
According to Sosin, Sweeney, and others from inside and outside the paper, Morris’ efforts to find trans reporters seemed sincere and aboveboard. All praised Morris’ good humor and sincerity.
And yet, by 2024, two and a half years after Sweeney was brought in by management to advise on recruiting trans reporters, the efforts never resulted in a hire. This leaves an open question: Why?
Were there no transgender journalists who could meet the NYT’s high standards? Was there internal resistance to hiring people who might disagree with the editorial direction NYT has taken on this? Or was NYT’s reputation so poor among members of the trans community that the sorts of journalists who would be qualified to take a job there wouldn’t want an offer?
Managing Editor Carolyn Ryan Has Concerns
There may not be a single answer to the questions of why efforts to recruit trans journalists have yet to bear fruit. One factor may well be the poor reputation of the NYT. For example, though Sosin says they never felt Morris was feeling them out about leaving the 19th, they also don’t believe they’d have taken a job. They’ve read the coverage and don’t believe the sort of reporting they want to do would fly at NYT, which is known in the industry for being unusually top-down and hierarchical as newsrooms go.
When it comes to less established candidates, Kae Petrin of the Trans Journalists Association speculated that the early-career reporters who’d be most interested in working there are still proving themselves. Petrin remains optimistic that hiring might result from the work that TJA has done to bring early-career trans journalists to the attention of NYT.
“Regarding hiring,” wrote Stadtlander, “The Times has a diverse newsroom covering a diversity of topics – our editors assign talented reporters to critically-important stories, regardless of how they personally identify. Our recruiting team actively seeks and connects with candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds, including those who publicly share that they are part of trans or gender non-conforming communities. And it's also important to note that we don't require any candidate to disclose their gender identity in the hiring process.”
“The Times partners with and attends conferences held by affinity groups and professional organizations like NLGJA: The Association of L.G.B.T.Q.+ Journalists, and Lesbians Who Tech. Additionally, we have met with The Trans Journalists Association to talk about our shared goals,” Stadtlander wrote.
In Assigned’s reporting, two names came up in multiple conversations about what, or who, might be impeding hiring: Executive editor Joe Kahn and managing editor Carolyn Ryan.
In 2021, when Sweeney met with management, the top editor was Dean Baquet. Joe Kahn was managing editor at that time, and Carolyn Ryan was one of the deputy managing editors. Then, in June of 2022, Baquet stepped down, with Kahn as his replacement. Ryan became co-managing editor, along with Marc Lacey.
Although Kahn was widely seen as a continuation of Baquet’s direction at the paper, Sweeney and other employees described Kahn’s style as far more top-down, more punishing of dissent, and less open to alternative perspectives than his predecessor. He put in place strict rules on what journalists could say on social media, and later came down hard on what could be said in the company's Slack channel.
It’s unclear whether the heavy-handed attempts at quashing internal dissent (which included management having posts of Sweeney’s deleted from the LGBTQ+ Slack channel) had any impact on hiring decisions. What seems clearer is that management were concerned about bias, not in their own coverage, but among transgender journalists.
In her interactions with Ryan, Sweeney was particularly passionate about adding trans reporters to the roster who would be savvy enough to resist the flood of right-wing propaganda on this issue. This came into conflict with Ryan’s concerns that the trans journalists with a history of covering these issues who were being presented as candidates lacked the objectivity necessary for NYT reporters.
Emails reviewed by Assigned media confirmed that, at one time, hiring trans journalists was a priority for Ryan and the paper, that Sweeney was involved in efforts to do so, and that Ryan raised early objections about the trans writers covering trans issues whose resumes she reviewed.
“One thing that’s a little tricky is some writers who are trans are writing for more overtly political or advocacy publications. And they are pretty outspoken in their articles and on social media,” reads part of an email Ryan wrote to Sweeney and others in November 2021.
According to Sweeney, Ryan went even further in person, saying she was concerned that if NYT were to hire trans journalists to cover trans issues it would create a perception of bias at the paper. Stadtlander relayed that Ryan does not recall making comments of this type.
“Regarding your claims of further comments beyond that email,” wrote Stadtlander, “Ms. Ryan has no such recollection, and the sentiment you put forward is not her position. The Times also has no policy against hiring people to cover specific topics, experiences and fields they know well, and our recruiting team actively seeks and connects with candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds.”
In the past, the NYT has pushed back hard against the idea that public concerns about bias, including concerns expressed by contributors to the paper itself, should have an impact on their reporting.
“We understand how GLAAD and the co-signers of the letter see our coverage,” Stadtlander, told NBC via email, for a story about NYT contributors concerns about bias at NYT. “But at the same time, we recognize that GLAAD’s advocacy mission and The Times’s journalistic mission are different.”
Journalistic ethics around issues of bias are complex, and disagreements common. What is objectivity? Is it possible for any human to lack bias? Where does identity come in? According to Kelly McBride, a journalism ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, the place to look for bias is within a story itself, not the reporter, and certainly not the identity of the reporter. However, there’s a long history in journalism of conflating objectivity with membership in the majority. In one recent case, a woman reporter for the Washington Post was banned from reporting on sexual assault after speaking publicly about her own experience.
“You cannot be disqualified as having a conflict of interest because of who you are and something that you cannot change about yourself,” said journalism ethics expert Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute. “But the next step is not to disqualify people because of who they are, but because of expressions that they’ve made. So, someone might say, well, [this journalist] has taken an activist position. I think one of the mistakes we’ve made in journalism is to mistake witnessing about your lived experience as activism.”
According to McBride, “Lived expertise is really important when you are covering any topic.” She believes that diverse hiring has long been understood as a way to avoid groupthink, improve sourcing, and produce a wider variety of stories on issues relating to minority populations.
As an industry, journalism has only recently begun to value diverse life experience in its reporters. This new interest in diversity is co-existing with the headwinds of falling profits and a struggle to find a business model that can support skilled, time intensive work. In layoffs, journalists from minority communities and women have been the hardest hit.
While Baquet’s 2021 effort to recruit an openly trans journalist never resulted in any hires, there are likely a few trans journalists at the paper today. Sweeney, without outing any of her former colleagues, says she’s confident there are fewer than 5 reporters who identify as trans. According to their website, 1700 journalists work for NYT.
Addressing diversity and hiring generally, Danielle Rhoades Ha, the Senior Vice President of External Communications for NYT, wrote via email that, “Our newsroom has hired people over the last several years who have voluntarily identified their gender identity, including nonbinary. We don't ask our candidates or staff if they identify as transgender.” Rhoades Ha also sent a link to the company’s most recent diversity and inclusion report. The report shows fewer than 1 percent of NYT employees identify as nonbinary and does not include the word transgender.
CORRECTION: This story originally named the wrong anti-trans Helen as having been the author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.