TWIBS: New York Times Pretty Sure Trans Coverage is Fair, Respectful

This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.

Asked what plans The New York Times has to hold themselves accountable to the transgender community after years of skewed, bad faith reporting and platforming some of the most virulent anti-trans hate groups—without disclosing their nature as purveyors of medical misinformation and pseudoscience—Chairman of the New York Times Company A.G. Sulzberger said, in so many words: We have none. We’re great, actually, and our reporting has been fair, respectful, and sensitive.

To anybody who has actually read the Times’ coverage of trans people over the last several years, that might read as a disingenuous crock of shit. Maybe Sulzberger hasn’t seen that The Onion article inspired by the Times.

At a Times shareholder meeting, Brooke Williams, mother of a trans teen, posed a fair question to Chairman Sulzberger (audio here, courtesy of Gender Liberation Movement, a nonprofit organization and advocate for trans people):

“The annual report says the Times news product is core to revenue growth, yet you’ve reported a loss of about two million news-only subscribers over the last few years. Part of that loss is directly attributed to the Times’ reporting on transgender people, which has been cited by the Trump administration and others to justify discrimination and harm. This reporting is deeply concerning to me as the mom of a trans teen. What steps are you taking to be accountable to concerns of the trans community, readers, and shareholders?”

Sulzberger’s reflexive response is not to engage with the meat of Brooke’s question about their harmful reporting, but instead to issue a correction: “We actually have more news subscribers than at any point in our history, and that number continued to grow robustly last year.”

Frankly, this isn’t worth quibbling about… but I’m gonna quibble anyway, because GLAAD provided evidence to the contrary in a press release, and I just can’t resist. Per the Times’ own reporting, as cited by GLAAD, their news-only subscriptions have fallen by millions over the last few years; 860,000 or 21% in 2023; 1,020,000 or 31% in 2024; and 620,000 or 21% in 2025. This is not some fluke, and while there are many factors at play in the decline of engagement with traditional news outlets, many readers and contributors explicitly condemn the Times’ biased and harmful reporting on the trans community.

Kindly do some research into your own internal metrics before you attempt to correct Brooke Williams, A.G. Sulzberger, you scumbag.

“That said, I really do appreciate hearing your perspective,” Sulzberger went on, lying, like a liar. “Our editors and reporters covering these issues and overseeing coverage of these issues have actually spent a lot of time exploring concerns like this, and meeting with those who have shared them. I believe [they] have concluded that our coverage has indeed been fair and comprehensive … It’s been incredibly rigorously reported and edited, and I think really respectful of the people we’re covering and sensitive to the moment. There are few issues in society that are evolving as quickly as questions around gender identity, and our role is to cover all aspects of that shift, fully and fairly.”

Okay.

Should we cite the experiences of Assigned’s own Billie Jean Sweeney, who used to work as an assignment editor at the Times’ International Desk? Sweeney, who was the first publicly trans journalist at the paper since the 1990s, retired from that job early and has been outspoken against the Times’ uneven, biased reporting on the trans community for years now.

Maybe we should talk about Pamela Paul, the former editor of the Times’ Opinion section who published transphobic drek like it was going out of style.

We could talk about Times reporter Azeen Gorayshi’s manipulation and betrayal of the parents of trans kids, and the paper’s uncritical republishing of liar Jamie Reed’s many lies.

There is, of course, the Times’ soft approach to profiling one of the most prolific anti-trans activists in the world, Riley Gaines, and the Times’ refusal to acknowledge their inaccurate reporting on the American Medical Association’s stance on gender-affirming youth, or hell, the fact that Times reporting made it onto the extremely prestigious and very serious Assigned Media Best/Worst Pieces of Trans Journalism 2025 list!

Can you believe it?

All of that is, sincerely, the absolute tip of the iceberg. I could spend all day padding out this article with a hundred more examples of the New York Times slandering, debasing, and disrespecting the trans community in print. You could establish an entire news outlet dedicated to debunking the Times’ bad coverage of the trans community, and never run out of work. To add insult to injury, in all of that coverage, our voices are rarely heard. Media Matters determined that the Times failed to quote a single trans voice in two-thirds of their stories on trans people between 2023 and 2024.

Eliel Cruz, cofounder of Gender Liberation Movement, provided us with Brooke Williams’ take on the situation, in her own words:

“As the mom of a trans teen and decades-long New York Times subscriber, it was incredibly disappointing to hear Sulzberger falsely dispute both the factual decline in news-only subscriptions since 2023 … and misrepresent the harmful ways they’ve reported on transgender people and healthcare, particularly in the last few years. Instead of the accuracy and care that I would expect from a 175-year-old organization who purport to “set the gold standard for American journalism,” Sulzberger responded to my question about the drop in subscribers … in a manner that was patronizing, inaccurate, and counter to The New York Times’ own standards of journalistic integrity.  

Sulzberger called the reporting “respectful” and “sensitive.” This is a far cry from the way the American Medical Association, family members interviewed, and their own former editors represent this coverage, as well as the lived experience of families like mine who field questions from “well-meaning” family, friends and community members after reading this false and misleading coverage. It’s incredibly painful—and nearly impossible—to educate people when The New York Times gets so much wrong about my child and our family’s experience.”

Brooke hit the nail on the head. The Times is an internationally respected paper with a very long and storied history, and their relentless contribution to the political and cultural movement against the very existence of trans people has caused untold irreparable harm. Fuck Sulzberger’s prevaricating; the Times has a duty to its readers and the innocent bystanders it has hurt to issue public apologies, retract their endorsement of anti-trans pseudoscience and transphobic hate organizations, and completely rethink its approach to reporting on the trans community and our many detractors.

That is the bare minimum, and until they do that, none of the news that comes from The New York Times is fit to print.

Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.