Missouri LGBTQ+ Org Raises Alarm at NYT Podcast Plans
Missouri families are reporting that Azeen Ghorayshi of the New York Times has sought their participation in a podcast that will cover gender affirming care. The largest LGBTQ+ organization in MO is warning families not to agree.
screenshot from PROMO email alert
by Evan Urquhart
New York Times reporter Azeen Ghorayshi has plans to return to the topic of gender-affirming care for youth in an upcoming podcast. However, in an extremely unusual development, a group that once helped to connect Ghorayshi to sources in the Missouri trans community is circulating an advisory warning families not to participate. This comes after Ghorayshi’s previous collaboration with the group resulted in an article that was perceived by many to be misleading and show signs of bias, leaving the vulnerable families who shared their personal stories with the reporter feeling angry and betrayed.
The warning was sent out on June 11 by PROMO, the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Missouri. It does not mince words.
“Azeen Ghorayshi is a New York Times reporter that has a history of covering transgender people and issues impacting the TGNC+ community with a self-proclaimed ‘two-sided’ approach. However, in reality, her ‘two-sided’ coverage makes her judge and jury spreading disinformation and dangerous rhetoric,” it begins.
The strong language continues throughout.
screenshot from PROMO email alert
The email flier, which relied on the accounts of families who say they were contacted by Ghorayshi, claims the planned podcast will focus on gender-affirming care for youth, and that its release is planned in the next “couple of months.” It says the first episode will focus on events surrounding a gender clinic in Missouri that the previous story described.
Assigned reached out to Ghorayshi, who chose not to provide a comment for this piece.
“Azeen has done immense harm to many of the families that continue to live in Missouri, and many who have been forced to leave the state,” explained Robert Fisher, Director of Communications for PROMO. “Her story did exactly what we hoped it would not do. We will not work with her or with the science desk. We will work with and have worked with other NYT reporters who have proven themselves to have the best interests of the trans community in mind.”
Although LGBTQ+ groups have circulated warnings about far-right activists posing as neutral documentarians, and declining to work with a journalist is common, this sort of warning about a mainstream journalist such as Ghorayshi is exceedingly rare.
This rarity may be explained by the unusual history between Ghorayshi, MO families, and PROMO. Ghorayshi’s previous work with the group resulted in a profile of former gender clinic staffer turned leaker Jamie Reed. It begins by characterizing the Missouri clinic as “buckling under an unrelenting surge in demand,” and closes with praise for Reed by an elder St. Louis endocrinologist whose only work has been with trans adults.
Buried deep in the body of the piece, it’s possible for a careful reader to glean that Ghorayshi’s reporting failed to substantiate Reed’s claims of wrongdoing at the Washington University Pediatric Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. However, remarkably, the substance of Reed’s most serious allegations appears nowhere in Ghorayshi’s piece.
In the piece, but buried toward the end, Ghorayshi reports that she reviewed medical records that proved at least one patient history that Reed detailed in her allegations was drastically misrepresented. This was a case involving liver toxicity in an immunocompromised patient who stopped a puberty blocker out of caution after having a bad reaction to a medication prescribed for something else. Reed presented this patient’s history as evidence of the danger of the puberty blocking medication, and also misrepresented the reaction the family had. Reed has said she hadn’t independently verified the story, which she got from a nurse who’d shared the information with her.
One parent who was contacted over the upcoming podcast is Heidi, the mother of the trans girl whose liver toxicity response was unique enough to allow the family to identify the case in Reed’s affidavit. She vehemently refused to participate in the podcast, but fears audio captured during Azeen’s reporting may still be used.
“Any day the podcast could come out, Jamie could post something about us, something could be on the local news, the court case could result in a subpoena. We live this everyday,” Heidi said, describing how she felt about the potential for an upcoming podcast that will rehash the story once again.
Although Ghorayshi’s article described Reed’s allegations as partially corroborated, when it comes to allegations of wrongdoing, all publicly available accounts from former patients and parents whose children were treated at the Transgender Center have contradicted Reed’s core claims of wrongdoing, which were that children were rushed into medical treatment, automatically approved for puberty blockers or hormone therapy without an assessment, and/or given medical treatments without obtaining parental consent. Ghorayshi’s article instead confirmed tangential claims Reed made, such as the fact that the Transgender Center often referred patients to outside therapists, which is routine for a clinic of this type.
No charges based on Reed’s sworn affidavit, made public in February of 2023, have ever been brought. The pediatric gender clinic closed after the Missouri GOP made gender-affirming care illegal in the state, in part as a response to the allegations made by Reed.
Ghorayshi’s reporting on trans youth has had a lasting impact. It has been repeatedly cited by states seeking to ban gender affirming care for youth, resulting in families forced to choose between their homes, careers, and families, and a treatment they feel has dramatically improved their children’s lives.
Some national LGBTQ+ organizations are attempting to push back. One such organization is GLAAD, which was established as a media watchdog for the LGBTQ+ community in 1985.
Commenting on PROMO’s alert, a GLAAD spokesperson wrote via email, “The Times positions transgender youth and their healthcare providers next to anti-LGBTQ politicians, as if these experiences are remotely comparable or honest, in some kind of twisted ‘both-sides’ coverage that gives equal weight to people simply living their lives and unhinged extremists. This is why trans people, their families, and their doctors refuse to work with certain Times journalists. The last thing a problematic journalist needs is a larger platform. Times readers, and podcast listeners, deserve–but thus far are not receiving–fair and accurate coverage of trans people.”
UPDATE: Several hours after this story was published, Assigned Media received a response to our request for comment from Danielle Rhoades Ha, the Senior Vice President, External Communications for the New York Times. She wrote:
“Azeen's story on the clinic was rigorously reported, based on numerous interviews with current and former patients, parents, medical providers, former staff and hundreds of pages of internal documents.
The role of an independent news organization is to report on issues of public importance and follow the facts where they lead. The Times has been committed to this mission and will continue to report carefully and thoroughly on complex topics.”
2nd UPDATE: In addition to the New York Times, Assigned Media received a request to add a comment from former clinic staffer Jamie Reed. Despite Reed not having been the subjects of any reporting for our story, having been mentioned here only because prior reporting involving her that appeared in another outlet was necessary context for our piece, Reed argued that, because the PROMO email had mentioned her (in a paragraph not quoted for this piece), a comment about that fact would be relevant to include. After some discussion, Assigned agreed to append the following statement by Reed as a courtesy, despite having no need to seek comment from individuals we have not directly reported on:
"In the previous version of this story the author had neglected to reach out to me for comment regarding the PROMO email that directly named me. The author allowed me two sentences but then demanded that my two sentences be used to frame for him why my comment was being added, so I am now using 4 sentences. An LGBT community organization can stifle free speech if it doesn't acknowledge its own influence and work to actively promote diverse viewpoints within the community. Many LGBT individuals have valid concerns about pediatric gender medicine and open discussion with the press is crucial to ensure all young people experiencing gender distress received the best care possible"
3rd UPDATE: Over 24 hours after this story was published Rhoades Ha requested that an additional comment be added, representing the NYT’s disagreement with the following phrase “all publicly available accounts from former patients and parents whose children were treated at the Transgender Center have contradicted Reed’s core claims of wrongdoing.”
Rhoades Ha wrote, “Your story selectively omits the facts of Azeen’s reporting. One patient who has since detransitioned provided medical records and said she was prescribed testosterone after only one appointment with the clinic’s endocrinologist. Emails also showed that another patient regretted their recent top surgery, and another complained about not getting assessed for autism. The story quotes emails showing that specialists at the clinic as well as ER doctors at the children’s hospital were concerned about the surge of patients from the clinic with mental health problems and how best to help them.”
Evan Urquhart is a science journalist and the founder of Assigned Media.