On Wednesday, hundreds of contributors to The New York Times formally expressed their discontent with how the paper covers transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people, publishing an open letter that condemns the paper's reporting as antagonistic toward those individuals. "The Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language," it reads, "while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources."
The claim is set against the backdrop of an ongoing debate about how, and if, people who identify as transgender—particularly minors—should be permitted to transition. But at its core, the letter is about a different debate: What questions are members of a free press allowed to ask?
