Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Today on the show we'll continue our series with the makers of the five documentaries nominated for the Oscar for Best Feature Documentary, which means full-length documentary. They have a separate category for documentary shorts. We started yesterday with the director of the film, Navalny, about the Russian dissident now in prison, Alexei Navalny. Today it's the film, All That Breathes, about the race to save a species of bird known as the black kite that's essential to New Delhi's ecosystem. That's coming up.

Also a call-in for people who have changed your given name from your cultural heritage name to assimilate more easily into school or the workplace or wherever in this country, or not, or changed and change back again like the TV host who used to go by Sal Masekela, and recently started using his real first name, Selema. Maybe you saw the Wall Street Journal article about that by Callum Borchers, who used to go by Cal. We'll ask how have you grappled with your real versus Americanized names. Are the trade-offs from assimilation in general becoming less desirable to today's younger generations. We'll actually do this as another one of our two-part call-ins by generation. Is all the namesplaining that you need to do more worth it? To today's 20 or 30-year-olds really less worth it, probably, than it was to yesterday's. We'll take your generational cause.

We'll have our climate story of the week with a young student, I think it's a seventh grader, and a teacher, on how they're being taught about climate in school.

We start here. Have you heard about or been involved with the controversy at The New York Times over its coverage of transgender people and transgender issues? More than 1,000 people, is the number that I'm seeing, who are or who have been Times staffers or contributors published an open letter to the paper's associate managing editor for standards last week, expressing what they called serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspapers reporting on transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming people. The letter said plenty of reporters at The Times cover trans issues fairly, but their work is eclipsed by what one journalist has calculated as over 15,000 words of front page Times coverage in the last eight months alone debating the propriety of medical care for trans children. The letter then goes into detail about some of the coverage that it says it's enabling far-right hate groups to cite stories in The Times as evidence for anti-trans legislation and arguments in court cases like around the law in Arkansas that maybe you've heard of that could make it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to offer any gender-affirming treatment to minors under 18.

The Times response to the letter fueled another round of outrage for not responding substantively to the criticism, but just saying basically that the protest letter goes against the paper's ethics policy for Times writers for aligning themselves with outside advocacy groups, and attacking one another's journalism publicly or publicly supporting such attacks. There was a companion letter submitted simultaneously by advocacy groups, including the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD and others.

Further fueling the fire on the day after the letter to The Times was received, The Times went ahead with its plan to publish an op-ed piece by columnist Pamela Paul defending J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter books author, who many trans people have come to see us against their full humanity. The column argues that it was not transphobic of Rowling to assert the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons, that on a person's legal gender status self-declared gender identity is insufficient or has expressed skepticism about phrases like people who menstruate in reference to biological women, and other related positions that Rowling has taken. That column being published on the day after the letter was submitted, plus no substantive response to the letter, as I said, added fuel to the fire.

That is some background on this internal crisis of confidence at The Times, and we will do a newsmaker interview now with two of the signatories of the letter. They are Jo Livingstone, a freelance journalist and critic who writes mostly about film, and a New York Times contributor, they helped to write the letter to The Times management as an organizer at nytletter.com, and Sabrina Imbler, staff writer at Defector, a worker-owned site and former science journalism fellow for The Times in 2021 and 2022. They had some articles there you couldn't forget the names of once you saw them like, Are You Really So Different From the Blue Sea Blob, did you read that one, and Finding Retirement Home for 466 Frozen Flatworm Fragments.

Jo and Sabrina, thanks very much for coming on for this. Welcome to WNYC.

Jo Livingstone: Thank you so much for having us, Brian.

Sabrina Imbler: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Trans callers, you'll get first priority on the phones. Your reactions to Times coverage of the topic and these open letters, 212-433-WNYC. Other signatories, also welcome to call. Times managers, you too want to use this platform to respond, 212-433-9692. And other people with questions or impressions, but trans or non-binary or gender non-conforming listeners, we want to center your voices here since there aren't a lot of places where that happens on the radio, and you're the most directly affected. First priority goes to you with whatever point of view, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or you can tweet a question or comment @BrianLehrer.

Jo, I want to acknowledge this didn't come out of the blue based on just the two articles cited by name in the letter. This has been building for a while, I gather. Would you like to describe the arc of how this developed and culminated with the letter last week?

Jo Livingstone: Of course. Thanks for the question. Yes, this has been rumbling for rather a long time among a lot of journalists working for The Times and not who have been aware of this disproportionate level of coverage around what seemed to be moral panic talking points from The New York Times that have become alarmingly intertwined with bills that are sort of now coming out in states across America. What we did, or a group of people did, was to take a lot of advice saying, "What would be the best way to try to reach the management of The Times? How can we start this conversation? How can we just get it going?"

We received a lot of advice saying essentially, "Write a letter, keep it respectful, use lots and lots of hard data, don't refer to the opinion page because that's just opinion, talk about history, phrase this as strongly as you can, but be courteous." That's exactly what we did. We addressed very specifically a complaint to somebody whose job it is to field complaints. We have 1,191 people who have written or contributed to The New York Times signing on by now. Before the day was over, we had received, as you mentioned, a very dismissive response. It has not become the conversation that we hope to have with Times management, but it's began a completely different one that has become a lot hotter and more fierce as the week has gone on.

Brian Lehrer: Sabrina, would you like to tell listeners in some more detail in what ways you think that Times content has been biased against trans people, or reasons that you decided to sign the letter?

Sabrina Imbler: Yes. I worked at The New York Times for about a year as a fellow, and it's a really lonely place to work as a trans person. I use they/them pronouns, and this was a learning curve for a lot of my co-workers, many of whom practiced a lot and apologized when they messed up and eventually got it right, but it was frustrating when I would be misgendered by someone I've been working with for six months. It was never malicious, but it didn't feel good. It felt reflective of the fact that there are very few trans people in the newsroom.

That also came to a head when I was working on a couple of stories about how hard it is for many trans youth to access health care, which I felt was an important story for the science and health desk, especially when laws are being announced in so many states seeking to ban youth access to transition care outright. I was told by the masthead that my stories on this subject were simply too long, and I was asked to trim key details that helped to show the scope of the problem, in my view. I felt demoralized when I kept seeing these long front page stories that question if too many trans kids are getting gender-affirming health care, and it felt like a double standard to me.

Brian Lehrer: Jo, there's a pushback article to the letter that I imagine you've seen in New York Magazine by Jonathan Chait. Since The Times hasn't responded substantively to the letter, maybe this is the most prominent thing in print. Let me run a few of his arguments by you and give you a chance to respond. Broadly summarizing, he says, "The practice within the medical community on how much to assess a minor before administering medical care has changed a lot in recent years, and is a source of major debate within the field. Reporting on that change and that debate is legitimate." Does he have a point there in any way to you?

Jo Livingstone: I think that that is [laughs] an observation. I think that investigating the answer to his implied question is fair if it is counterbalanced by accurate reporting to suggest the opposite. When the paranoid reading that I think lurks behind his observation, which is that this is a bad thing, that we should not want this for our children, that we should try to do something about society because this might happen to my child without me knowing, it's a very familiar rhetoric, I think. In the letter, we lay out very clearly, I think the history of the way that it's been acceptable to frame hateful rhetoric around LGBTQ+ people under the guise of, "Oh, we're just asking questions. Oh, we're just worried. Oh, we're we just afraid?" This is not the same thing as responsible reporting. Jonathan Chait, I hear has not edited at New York Magazine. I don't know where he's getting his sourcing. We worked very, very, very hard on our letter, was definitely much more forcibly checked than Chait's was. It almost seems unfair to have to respond to him, to be frank.

Brian Lehrer: Really. Do you dispute the premise, and I guess the premise of the article in question in the Times, that there is significant change in the medical community, and there is significant debate in the medical community?

Jo Livingstone: I can't speak for doctors. My partner is a medical professional in the field of trans medicine. I would say at base, the core guidelines given to doctors for how to treat cisgender, as well as transgender people with medications such as puberty blockers, which is at the center of a lot of this debate, it's standard. What's not standard is something like the bill that South Dakota governor signed into law last Monday, banning both surgical and non-surgical gender-affirming treatments for transgender minors in that state. Now, non-surgical treatments includes puberty-blocking medication. This is, again, a standard treatment for a variety of conditions. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Sabrina, do you want to take a stab as a science journalist on what a responsible article or coverage of that topic might look like in the Times or anywhere else as you see it? If you accept the premise that there is a lot of debate in the medical community, and that that's largely about permanent changes that would occur from that medical intervention and when it's appropriate.

Sabrina Imbler: I guess I would say that debates are constantly happening in a lot of different medical fields. This debate affects such a small fraction of the population in general. I think in my eyes, what I see as the larger story, is the vast number of trans kids and trans youth that are not able to access this kind of care for financial reasons, for reasons of lacking parental support, this lack of gender clinics that you can drive to. Again, I think it's just about, as Jo is saying, counterbalancing this coverage with what I see as the more important story of the lack of access to this care.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here is Michelle in Monmouth County.

Michelle, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Michelle: Thank you, Brian Lehrer. I read the article that I believe Pamela Paul, her name is, that she wrote, and I find it very--

Brian Lehrer: That's the one, just so the listeners know, that's the one defending J.K. Rowling. Go ahead.

Michelle: Yes. I find it very disheartening that she would write this article, and I don't get it why she tries to portray herself as a centrist during something as sensitive as trans rights. It feels as if the New York Times wanted to respond to what I believe it's glad when they wrote a letter of disappointment in the New York Times in their coverage of trans rights. I think that it's a disregard for trans rights, and it reflects the moral panic that's going on in not only America but also Britain. Because J.K. Rowling's rhetoric is really reflective of a lot of elected politicians and parliament.

I listened to the debate that the Scottish National Party had with the conservatives and the other parties in the Palace of Westminster. The conservatives really mirrored the sentiment that Rowling had, that the trans people that apparently to them and that many of them are like sex offenders and that they shouldn't be in a prison that caters to their preferred gender. I feel it's very disheartening, and it is contrary to what they claim to be supporting human rights when trans rights are being disregarded and their health is at stake. I think that the New York Times should really consider the editors that they have when publishing their articles.

Brian Lehrer: Michelle, thank you very much for your call. We really appreciate it.

Diana in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Diana.

Diana: Hi, how are you? I'm transgender. I have been since I was 19. I'm 66 now. I'm a transgender activist. I do the Diana Montford Show on television, and the Diana Montford Show podcast. I'm saying this not to advertise myself, but to show you that I know what I'm talking about.

Brian Lehrer: If you call into the show, you get a free promo anyway, but go ahead.

Diana: Okay. First of all, puberty blockers do not cause permanent changes. As soon as trans youth go off puberty blockers, the natural puberty takes its course. There are no permanent changes from puberty blockers. Young trans people often commit suicide if they do not have access to transgender medications. They live in a haze of depression. They are bullied, they are despised through no fault of their own. Transgender care for minors is a great thing. Ironically enough, I know a former assignments editor at the Times who was assigned male at birth and who had reassignment surgery, gender-affirming surgery, and became the woman she always was. She quit. She left the employee of the Times. This was about 15 years ago, and she now lives a very private life in Maryland. I can't tell you her name, but really the right-wing people take what the Times writes, since the Times purports to be the paper of record, and they hold on to this and use it as an argument against trans rights, which as Michelle pointed out just a moment ago, trans rights are human rights.

Brian Lehrer: Diana, thank you very much for your call. We really appreciate it.

Jo and Sabrina, let me put a question to you that has come in on Twitter. Listener rights, can you please ask if they feel the elimination of the public editor position in 2017 has led to the issue of coverage bias we're seeing today?

Does either one of you want to take a stab at that?

Jo Livingstone: I'd love to. I don't feel I can speak to whether or not the public editor, they still do exist, could have intervened in the coverage, but the lack of a public editor is what has caused the disaster, as I see it, that has unfolded for the Times since we sent our letter to them. Michelle, the caller, very astutely mentions the GLAAD Letter, so that's G-L-A-A-D, the advocacy group, who delivered a letter directly after we did to the New York Times. We emailed our letter, they delivered it by hand.

Now, within the day, as I said, we received a response to our letter that was framed as a response to the GLAAD letter. This is the same conflation that was repeated in the memo that was sent threatening retaliation to workers for having signed our letter. Which specifically said, "How dare you join forces with an advocacy group in order to criticize our coverage?" Now, this is inaccurate. [laughs] we haven't yet seen even an acknowledgement of our letter's existence, which is signed 100% by journalist. This is not a piece of advocacy. This is an independent letter written to somebody whose job it is to take it, and I don't think ordinarily that the New York Times would reject out of hand correspondence from, say, Hilton Als, Rebecca Solnit, Cynthia Nixon. These are not people who the New York Times would ordinarily reject out of hand.

Brian Lehrer: To be clear, those are some of the signatories to your letter, names that people might know who signed the letter. Go ahead, sorry.

Jo Livingstone: Not at all. Absolutely, those are just some of the luminaries that I'm so proud and moved flocked to support us when we asked people for support. It's such a critical mass of critical thinkers that I do think that if there was somebody who was good at their job and had a job at the Times who was going to deal with this, they would've done much, much better, so yes.

Brian Lehrer: Sabrina, do you want to address that too, the Times trying to draw a line around not criticizing your colleagues publicly and not joining arms as they see it with advocacy groups whose purpose might not be to support journalistic complexity where it exists, but simply to push coverage in the direction of its interests, like interest groups do on any side of any issue, I imagine the Times would say?

Sabrina Imbler: Sure. I don't believe there is a black-and-white line between advocacy and journalism. I think it's easier to think that you can be a totally objective impartial observer if the rights of your community are not being targeted by state governments across the US. I think that the Times' policy of barring individuals from participating in public opinion and public protest, I think it's ridiculous to think I have to be a journalist before I am a person in the world whose perspective is shaped by my experiences and who is also capable of reporting a story fairly. I think we lose credibility as journalists if we stay silent and pretend we don't care. As Jo pointed out, this letter is directed to the standards editor who sets the standards of journalism at the Times. It's issued as a complaint from journalists to journalists.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another phone call.

Christian, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Christian.

Christian: Hey, Brian, everyone, how are you doing this morning?

Brian Lehrer: Doing okay. Thanks for asking. What you got?

Christian: I'm a national educator and trans activist, and I'm located here in New York City. What I can tell you is that these bills that are affecting youth, they're in, I believe, 42 states right now, and especially the one with Utah is the most stringent, that just passed. It's sinister because the date, it's also written into the law, that no one, any youth who does not have gender dysphoria, because we all need a diagnosis, because we're all mentally ill, on their documentation, they will not get hormone replacement therapy if that is their path and their truth. Now, the thing is with that is that the people who-- The law doesn't go into effect until it's voted. All of these youth in Utah are basically without hormones and hormone replacement therapy or any affirming healthcare necessarily.

Since May 22nd, and even those after are the ones that their treatment's going to be taken away. This is really about, and every year, I just want to say, Brian, that genders, identities, pronouns, and names are not chosen, are preferred, they're just our names. We get our sex assigned at birth because a doctor has about three seconds to check over the beautiful human that just came into the life of this family and this world to ensure that and just to check all the boxes. Sometimes that doesn't align with what that person becomes and who they are. What we really need to do, these laws, these rules, this right-wing, all of this hate is rules for Z, not for me in a sense.

You know what? Come for us adults. I'm 42, I'm also a radical social worker, and I've been an activist and an educator around affirming healthcare for over 20 years. You know what, [laughs] those of us who are adults, we can stand right in front of those right-wing folks. We can stand and we can take that hate. We really shouldn't have to, and a lot of times that's not necessarily the case. We can't. It's a lot to take on, but you know what, I'd rather be there. I'd rather have adults on the frontline and have the kids behind us, because you don't go after kids. You don't go after that, and you don't come after trans people because as your guest did say, trans rights are human rights. We are humans, we're not others, we're not it, we're not anything else. Our pronouns matter, our embodiments, our existences, our lives matter, and every year is on track to be the most deadliest for trans and gender nonconforming, and non-binary people.

Those numbers that are reported are completely inaccurate because not every death and not every suicide is recorded because a lot of people don't have the documentation, a lot of people live in jurisdictions where it's not recognized. A lot of these deaths and crimes are not hate crimes, and on top of that, a lot of bodies aren't claimed, and they get put into Potter's field, and what you see is what you get. Most people--

Brian Lehrer: Christian, let me jump in just for a time and follow up. As this relates to the New York Times, I'm going to throw a Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine pushback argument at you and see what you think about it. That your position, and you articulated this at the beginning of your call, that the main harm that comes from the times reporting is empowering the right. He says, reporting on real changes in the practice of medicine and debates within the practice of medicine doesn't really do that when it's on the pages of the New York Times. Forces of actual hate push hate. If you look like you're trying to silence legitimate reporting, you'll inadvertently add fuel to their fire too. These laws, like in Arkansas and elsewhere, that probably none of these doctors or reporters support, probably think they're disgusting, aren't being caused by reporting in the Times which reflects the disgust that people have about the anti-trans movement.

Christian: Well, actually, that's just the same argument that the rights keeps projecting, and who's reading that? The New York Times is one of the most widely read articles, and yes, they can report, there's freedom of speech. The freedom of speech gives everyone the right to speak freely and without thinking sometimes. The truth of the matter is that is a shield that that person is hiding behind to embolden the right, and that person actually probably is a conservative right-wing individual who doesn't see trans people as real. You know what? This is why the Trevor Project exists. This is why a lot of these services, and this is why-- Because this falls under media, social media, and everything. This is what kids, and this is what adults are being told by one of the largest, most well-known worldwide newspapers.

It's irresponsible, it's reckless, and it is completely uninformed. Sure, go ahead, you can say that I'm pushing back on the right and I'm censoring someone. That's actually kind of-- You can grapple at any argument. Especially, think about it, anyone in any courtroom at any crime can say they didn't do this, they didn't do that. That's simply the same as what this reporter is saying. He's basically handing over all the ammunition just to kick someone while they're down. This is what hate does, and this is why there's no place for that anywhere, and it is everywhere. This is a harmful microaggression. It's not even a microaggression, it's harm, and he's hiding behind a shield.

I invite him to have a conversation with any trans person in person.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Christian. Thank you very much.

Jo and Sabrina, we just have a few minutes left. I want to touch one or two more points here. Jo, do you see, as somebody who helped write the letter to the Times, among all these contributors to the Times, which both of you are, for people who just joined us, is there any prospect on the horizon that you see of the dialogue that Christian just suggested take place or the substantive response that I imagine you hope would come and the change that might result from it?

Jo Livingstone: Absolutely, I do. I think there's enormous momentum inside the Times, perhaps not inside management, but with the people who work there. We are not the only people who have ever made these points. This is a groundswell, I believe, among professionals. This has happened before, and it ended. What I'm referring to that is, when it was normal for homophobes to just ask questions about whether or not it was endangering their children to be around us, and by us, I mean, queer people. When in the letter, we talk about what we see as transphobia in the paper, I'm calling back to an era of outright homophobia in the New York Times as a workplace and as a newspaper. It's actually not an echo, it's the same thing. It just didn't stop, I think, but society got together and reformed what inflammatory language was and wasn't acceptable. I think it's going to happen again. I think it's happening now.

Brian Lehrer: Sabrina, I want to give you the chance to expand on something that you touched on briefly earlier, representation at the Times. You talked about very little trans presence in the newsroom when you worked there, that would bring people's lived experience more into the center of editorial decisions. Can you talk more about that, or say what you think would rectify it?

Sabrina Imbler: Of course. I think the the lack of trans staff and trans journalists in the newsroom, it absolutely leads to standards that are being set for journalism. For example, many stories in the New York Times will introduce someone as Sabrina Ambler, who uses the pronouns they and them, which is an awkward phrase, and I think underestimates how many people will still understand the piece without this explanation. I found when I was doing my reporting, and quoting experts who used they/them pronouns, the copy editors would remove all references to these people's pronouns around their quotes, which I was told was to avoid confusion, but the resulting text was often more confusing. Pronouns help you understand who's talking in a piece.

I couldn't ignore the implication. You know that I, as someone who uses data and pronouns, which is an anomaly at the Times, was also confusing. Another time when I interviewed a source who uses multiple pronouns, the standards desk told me that this person's identity was "baffling." This feels indicative of the knee-jerk reaction to trans people and trans identities at the New York Times. Instead of seeking to understand and include us, the New York Times dismissed this us as confusing, and implies that the style guide that has evolved and changed with time won't evolve to change to validate us.

I hope there can be more trans journalists and more trans staff at the Times.

Brian Lehrer: One more call, and I am delighted to be able to take a call from former Brian Lehrer Show producer in, Am, in Brooklyn.

Am, I hope that's okay, that I outed you as somebody who [chuckles] worked on the show. [chuckles] Thank you so much for calling in.

Am: Yes, thanks for taking my call. Oh, my gosh, I'm really happy this conversation is happening. Yes, it's just sad. I wanted to reference, there was a piece in The Defector called How many trans people does The New York Times believe there should be? Which I think says it all. In the coverage of the Times, I've noticed there seems to be that through line of like, "Oh, the alarming rise in the number of trans people seeking treatment or whatever." Can you imagine that being said about gays and lesbians, like the alarming increase of gay people, and it's like, we're just like 100 years in the past in terms of how we talk about trans people and gender non conforming people.

Brian Lehrer: Am, thank you. Jo, that was a reference in the letter too, that the Times really did report like that, on the increasing number of gay and lesbian people coming out decades ago. I think the example cited was from the 1960s, but the way that was reported then, and maybe they've changed on that particular slice of people at that time, and now going through a similar thing on this. Is that how you would put it?

Jo Livingstone: Yes, so referring to the 60s, the word gay had made its way into the New York Times, but it was banned in the mid 70s after there was an article about a queer cruise, that is an actual boat with queer people on it, which had, the article said, a sadomasochistic fashion show on it. When this happened, this is in 1975, the Times publisher, Arthur Salzburg's mother, called him horrified and said, "This can't stand." Arthur Salzburg got to work, updated the style guide, and using the word gay was banned until 1987. Now, that's 12 years that somebody's mother's [chuckles] feelings dictated the tone set for the entire country, if not the world, for how to speak about people like me. I was born in 1997, [chuckles] so sometimes one feels history moving through one's own life. I think that it's the issue of my lifetime, I think in terms of changing of language.

Brian Lehrer: Sabrina, last question, do you think coming out of that answer, that this is a matter of implicit bias? The Jonathan Chait article in New York Magazine argues that, if upper management at the time said any kind of transphobe agenda, it would run a wider swath of articles questioning things like whether people should be addressed by their pronouns of choice or things like that. Do you think this is very different in kind, from some of the explicit right wing media that is clearly trading on transphobia and trans hate, and that it's an implicit bias that you're trying to raise their consciousness on, or how would you describe it in that respect?

Sabrina Imbler: Yes. I think implicit bias is a good term. As you mentioned, Brian, there are shades of bias from things that people do that they don't intend, to more overt right wing attacks. I think this all goes back to this false sense that journalists can be objective and have no bias in their body. We all have bias. I'm constantly trying to confront the bias that I have and learn more to undo that in my own work. I hope that upper management at the New York Times can listen to this vast coalition of contributors and freelancers, many of whom are trans and try to understand what we're saying, and open their eyes to the idea that they might be harboring bias.

Brian Lehrer: Well, conversation engaged on what is legitimate journalism on these particular matters that you singled out in the letter, and what kind of response the Times owes you substantively, as well as on journalistic practices and professional practices. We thank you both very much for coming on today. Sabrina Ambler and Jo Livingston, two journalists who have been New York Times contributors, and are signatories to the letter that's been in the news. Thank you very much for coming on.

Sabrina Imbler: Thank you so much for having us, Brian.

Jo Livingstone: Thank you, and having this conversation with you on the radio, it means a lot. It means a lot to me personally, and I'm sure to Sabrina as well.

Sabrina Imbler: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. Brian Lehrer, on WNYC. More in a minute.

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