Bad Ink

In BAD INK, award-winning trans activist Riki Wilchins, definitively chronicles how and why the nation’s newspaper of record became the leading national voice for attacking transgender kids.

Beginning in 2015 just as A. G. Sulzberger was taking over as Publisher, the New York Times underwent a strange shift: from its long-time support for transgender rights overnight it became the nation’s leading voice attacking transgender kids. In nearly 70,000 words in dozens of articles, it attacked their right to transition, to medical care, to sports participation—even the very idea that they were transgender. It was—as Tom Scocca summed up in Popula— “a plain old-fashioned newspaper crusade,”

But the Times’ crusade wasn’t based on new reporting or fresh medical evidence, but on talking points being promoted by white Christian nationalist organizations devoted to eradicating gay and transgender people. And it was timed just as MAGA politicians introduced over 1,000 bills in scores of states to outlaw every aspect of trans kids’ lives.

It was all apparently part of Sulzberger’s new plan to remake that liberal rag so it could appeal to right-wing readers for the digital age. And unfortunately, it worked.