Legislation attacking the rights of transgender people has kept the community in the news cycle almost constantly this year.
Trans journalists and advocates say the increased newsroom focus on accurately covering the community has led to better stories. But it hasn’t always been that way.
Kae Petrin, one of the co-founders and president of the Trans Journalism Association said that in 2019 Trans coverage was a lot different then what we’re seeing today. TJA was founded in 2020 to connect Trans journalists and give them a space to share ideas, discuss issues in the newsrooms and share resources.
Before trans issues took the political center stage, Petrin said most publications that covered them were either part of the LGBTQ+ press or did one-off pieces that lacked nuance. But now that’s changed.
Suddenly, anti-trans legislation is relevant to newsrooms across the country, they said.
Petrin said that some of the biggest issues they have seen with trans coverage this year is a lack of trans representation in stories about the community, and mainstream media being late to cover the full implications of anti-trans bills.
“There are many stories that don’t quote a single Trans person or that quote cisgender experts about how the bills impact our communities,” Petrin said.
Another TJA board member, Graph Massara, said accurately covering the trans community is following basic journalistic principles.
“I just wind up telling people journalism 101, to ask their source what their pronouns are, how would they like to be identified, like you ask someone else what their title would be,” said Massara, who is the TJA stylebook editor and who has worked with the Associated Press Stylebook team to update their entries on gender and sexuality.
“If you’re writing a political story about a political policy that affects particular minority groups, you should probably make sure you talk to at least some of those people and not just spokespeople for advocacy groups or sponsors of the bill.”
Massara said that some of the issues come from the ways newsrooms evaluate newsworthiness. In many places, he said, it’s deviations from the norm that are considered newsworthy, but that can be difficult to apply to already-marginalized communities. For example, stories about trans people who regret their transition can get outsized attention, even though the phenomenon is extremely rare in context – only about 3% of trans people regret their transition according to Gender Health Query.
Massara said he understands that some reporters may not have known how to cover the trans community right off the bat, but by now these issues have been in the news cycle long enough that newsrooms should prioritize accurate trans coverage.
One reporter who has been on the front lines of this anti-trans legislation is Hannah Schoenbaum. She’s a government and politics reporter for the Associated Press in North Carolina, where the Republican-led Legislature overrode the governor’s veto and banned gender-affirming medical treatments.
She said while there were many young, queer, non binary-trans people who felt safe enough to speak at legislative sessions, she also wanted the voices of those who didn’t.
Schoenbaum said by attending community groups and events she became a recognizable figure in LGBTQ+ spaces. Along with regular off-the-record conversions with community leaders, lobbyists and other advocates she was able to cultivate a network of sources.
“I never pretend to understand someone else’s lived experience just because I’m part of the LGBTQ+ community or because I’ve interviewed other trans people before,” Schoenbaum said.
But not every reporter has a personal connection to the LGBTQ+ community. One resource that reporters can use is the SPJ’s Gender and Race Hotline.
Rod Hicks is the Director of Ethics and Diversity for the Society of Professional Journalists and oversees SPJ Gender and Race Hotline, which serves as a resource for journalists to get help on issues of race and gender. If reporters have questions about tone, phrasing or just want a sensitivity read, they can submit a request via the hotline.
“They (the hotline operators) don’t just say things off the top of their head. They do research and they will come back and say, well, AP Stylebook says this. The Transgender Journalist Association says that. This is what the New York Times did in this situation and this is what another news organization did in a similar situation,” Hicks said, describing how the hotline operates. “Giving them options to think about. What we do is provide research for people to come to their own decisions.”
Even without resources, a personal connection or special access, Adam Rhodes, the TJA secretary and freelance reporter, said you can still accurately cover the trans community.
“Listening to your sources, and then taking a step back and being able to cut through euphemism and rhetoric and both-sides-ism to tell real stories” Rhodes said “tell stories about people, about their unique struggles and their unique lives. And again, it is not like it’s not incredibly difficult work. Any reporter should be able to do this well.”