The New York Times Still Has Guts
The New York Times Still Has Guts
NYT response to an ‘open letter.’
I first heard about this fiasco a few days ago on my favorite Substack podcast, The Fifth Column. The Times—the ‘paper of record’—has disappointed me greatly over the past few years, their biased coverage, especially around race, becoming, for me, finally too much to bear.
Whether it was support for the ‘mostly nonviolent’ 2020 riots, or the dishonest coverage of the Central Park Karen situation, or the lying about young black men beating up Asian citizens (I saw this with my own eyes; I lived in Manhattan from 2019-2021), or the non-coverage of the black Wisconsin man who rammed his car through a parade killing a little boy, creating a hero myth about George Floyd, or the constant barrage of far-left woke OpEds, it was just too damn much to swallow. No serious person could fully respect the times. Not after 2020. At least not around certain hot-button issues.
But. This may be a positive sign of things to come. Perhaps The Woke Wave is at last cresting.
A few days ago the organization GLAAD—an LGBTQ advocacy group—published an open letter alongside many NYT employees criticizing the Times’ reporting of trans issues. Here’s a tidbit from The Hill:
“The letter specifically takes issue with a Times story from last June that uses the term ‘patient zero’ to refer to a transgender young person seeking gender-affirming care, which the signatories say is ‘a phrase that vilifies transness as a disease to be feared.’”
I want to be clear about my own views: I’m a classical liberal. I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and then New York City. I’ve only ever voted Democrat. I have close gay friends. I don’t care who does what or why, what kind of sex you have, etc. I’m pro—LGBTQ. But. Especially around trans issues related to young people: this is very new, complicated stuff. Double-mastectomies on 14, 15-year-old girls. Hormone blockers. Puberty blockers. These are serious changes to the body and we don’t have enough data yet to know what is what. Certainly this deserves sincere and diverse debate, discussion, argument. These are KIDS we’re talking about.
The letter goes on to say: “Yet the Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources.”
Executive editor Joe Kahn responded: “Our coverage of transgender issues, including the specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written,” he said. “We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.”
And again from the executive editor Joe Kahn:
“It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name,” Kahn wrote. “Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy. That policy prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest actions on matters of public policy. We also have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks.”
A-fucking-men.
Look. Journalism is journalism. There’s always going to be some slant, some ideological bias, because we’re flawed human beings. But when journalism and political activism merge to prevent institutions from presenting honest, fair, balanced articles? That’s totalitarian. Michael Moynihan on The Fifth Column talked about this: the idea that there is One Right Truth is terrifying, Orwellian, naive, stupid, and ignorant, not to mention ahistorical.
To be clear: this open letter is symbolic of exactly why we’re in the political polarization we’re in. It’s happening on BOTH sides. Yes. You heard me right. BOTH sides. You must convince people of your arguments; you cannot force their hand. Not in a free Democracy.
To my mind, this rebuttal by the Times is the most exciting thing to happen in journalism since 2020.
Thank you, New York Times, for having GUTS.
Here’s the article I referenced (The Hill): https://thehill.com/homenews/3862101-nyt-editors-paper-will-not-tolerate-its-journalists-protesting-coverage-of-transgender-people/amp/