The anti-trans pivot at the Times is sharp. It’s notable. It has been protested in open letters from GLAAD and over 4,000 current and former Times contributors (including me). And—as Kahn reminded colleagues, in a sharply worded memo addressing those open letters—the Times has absolutely no interest in changing course. Nor are staffers allowed to comment on this coverage in social media, interviews or, indeed, any “public forum.” Staffers who signed the open letter have reportedly been subject to “investigation” and disciplinary action; the crackdown has been so harsh that the NewsGuild of New York has stepped in, noting that under its auspices, protest “is concerted activity protected by the National Labor Relations Board.”
The response to both the letters from two weeks ago included a sentence stating that current policy prevents “journalists from aligning with advocacy groups”, in an effort to misconstrue the two as being part of the same campaign and to portray NYTimes journalists’ concerns as being motivated by activism rather than discrimination.
Meanwhile, yesterday (Feb 28) the NYT published an Op-Ed by Adam Hoffman, described only as a “Princeton Senior”, about how extreme acceptance of the rights of LGBTQ students, Native and Black Americans, and other minorities has driven himself and other students to identify themselves as politically right wing. Hoffman is a member of pro-Republican advocacy group Campus Reform, a subsidiary of Morton Blackwell’s “The Leadership Institute” which receives over $10 million a year from right wing donors like the Uihleins,Kochs, Bradley Foundation, and others.
But like the linked article says, this is keeping in complete consistency with the NYT’s prior stances:
As the AIDS epidemic began to emerge, the silence of the media in general, and of The New York Times in particular, contributed to the magnitude of the unfolding tragedy. Although the death toll mounted in the early 1980s, the Times maintained a disdainful distance. As gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile put it, “Rosenthal, who attacks anti-Semitism in the media, never realized that the way he was treating the AIDS epidemic wasn’t much different from the way that news organizations treated the Holocaust early on.”
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