The New York Times Quotes Trans People Less Often Than Other Major News Outlets
Our news tracker looked at coverage of trans issues in major US outlets and found one newsroom dominates the coverage while lagging behind peers in representing the perspectives of trans people themselves.
Analysis, by Evan Urquhart
As trans people see their rights eroded by the Trump administration, written news coverage of the trans community is dominated by a single outlet, the New York Times. Among the major news outlets we tracked, the Times had by far the most stories mentioning the trans community, and the lowest percentage of stories that quoted a trans person.
The Assigned Media 2026 Trans News Tracking Project catalogues news stories in 10 outlets that contain the words “trans,” “transgender,” “gender identity,” “gender ideology,” and “biological sex.” In addition to the New York Times, we track the coverage of the two other major national newspapers, the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. In addition, we look at coverage in the Associated Press wire service as well as the websites for four national news broadcasters that aren’t primarily print focused, that of NPR, ABC, NBC, and CBS. For comparison, we also track Mother Jones and the 19th, two smaller news sites known for having more progressive politics.
data from Assigned Media’s Trans News Tracking Project
While it’s still early in the year, one trend is already undeniable: The dominance of the New York Times’ trans coverage. Between January 1 and April 25, a stunning 214 print stories in the Times included one of our keywords, far surpassing the 130 stories by the AP or the 110 stories in the Post that did so. This trend was somewhat less pronounced when we looked only at news stories whose main subject concerned trans issues (leaving out op-eds, arts and culture stories, and stories that only briefly mentioned one of our keywords). The Times had 60 such news stories, compared to 51 by the AP and 25 by the Post.
Each outlet in our tracker has its own audience, its own strategy, and its own recent history under the rise of American fascism. This makes it difficult to compare, for example, the Times with the Wall Street Journal’s total of 36 stories, 20 of which were in opinion, with all of the latter taking an extreme anti-trans position. However, one comparison seemed fair to make across all outlets; the percentage of stories whose main subject concerned trans issues that quoted a trans person. In that comparison, the Times came dead last, with only 12 of their 60 news stories about the trans community quoting a person who was identified in the text as either trans or as a representative of an organization with “trans” or “transgender” in its title.
data from Assigned Media’s Trans News Tracking Project
The industry standard in journalism is that everyone with a significant stake or point of view ought to be quoted in a story, to reduce bias and give the news consumer a well-rounded picture of the topic. While there are some hard rules about who to quote – a journalist should never break news about an individual or organization without reaching out to ask for comment – it’s significantly less clear how often activists or representatives of an identity group should be included. However, compared to other major news organizations, in the first few months of 2026 the Times quoted trans people and representatives of trans advocacy groups the least often of all the outlets that we looked at. The paper quoted a trans person in just 20 percent of their stories. The next lowest percentage was for ABC, whose website has very limited print offerings and who quoted a trans person in one of the four trans news stories on their website.
Other mainstream outlets ranged from 29 percent for both AP and NBC to 50 percent for NPR, with the 19th far outstripping all the rest by featuring at least one quote from a trans person in 70 percent (or 12 of 17) of their trans news stories. The wide gulf reflects a variety of audiences, types of news stories, and approaches to newsgathering, but the Times stands out as being the least interested of every outlet in our tracker in providing their audience with trans perspectives.
LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations such as GLAAD have previously raised concerns about the lack of trans perspectives in news stories concerning the trans community. In 2025, the Trans Journalists Association studied coverage of trans issues during Trump’s first 100 days and found that only 30 percent of news stories in their sample quoted a trans person. Several outlets in our analysis hovered around that 30 percent benchmark, however the outlet with the most coverage, the New York Times, stood out as having the least representation of trans perspectives. This suggests the Times is more biased than other outlets while having an outsized impact on the national conversation about trans issues. This concerning pattern, where the most prolific news outlet is also the most biased, may help explain some of the negative shift in public opinion in recent years, as well as the backsliding in civil rights for trans people in America.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.