Trans News Network calls New York Times boycott for accurate trans coverage, following boycott from WAWOG

Trans News Network is calling for a public boycott of the New York Times, including Times products like the Games and Cooking apps and withholding clicks from links to reporting published in the paper: “No excuses, no exceptions … This boycott will no longer be necessary when the NYT stops pushing [the] genocide [of trans people].”

The trans-led non-profit newsroom published their announcement Aug. 21, writing that the Times’ news framing and opinion pieces have contributed to an anti-trans atmosphere while human rights experts warn about the early stages of trans genocide in the United States. 

“We are real people, and these are real lives that are being actively threatened by the kind of environment the New York Times is actively contributing to,” Mira Lazine, TNN co-founder and reporter, said. 

TNN demands resignation of key management officials from the Times, including publisher A.Z. Sulzberger, and the dismissal of several reporters whose articles have been cited in anti-trans legislation alongside a completely different editorial direction.

“I have personally seen how much of the Times’ reporting hurt people in my community,” Lazine continued. “I’m one of the people that fled across the country because of anti-trans laws. The New York Times was contributing to the atmosphere that created them.”

Throughout the start of the decade, reporters, media workers, and media accountability organizations have critiqued the Times’ reporting and commentary for spreading misinformation about trans people. And the call to boycott, divest, and unsubscribe from the Times is not new. Trans News Network’s announcement follows the same demand from Writers Against the War on Gaza, which urged readers to withhold their money and attention from the Times in Feb. 2024 for the newspaper’s role in being “not only complicit in, but accountable for, the slaughter of Gaza.” 

Times continually under fire for trans coverage

TNN called the Times “an avowedly anti-trans publication”, while the Times has responded to community concerns of its trans coverage by saying the publication doesn’t believe in taking an advocacy position. 

Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times, said the paper has “reported fully and fairly on transgender issues ranging from challenges and prejudice faced by the community to the fight for expanding rights and freedoms to open debates about care.” 

He called the paper’s coverage “rigorously reported and edited, respectful of the people we’re covering and sensitive to the moment.” 

In recent years, accountability publications Media Matters and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) have published analyses critiquing transgender coverage from the Times. Investigative outlet Mother Jones found anti-trans bills continually cited the outlet’s reporting on trans people — echoed in the U.S. v. Skrmetti decision last year, in which Times articles were cited 29 times in favor of the state’s argument for limiting youth gender-affirming care.

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Related: New York Times podcast on youth trans care leaves out the patients

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And in 2023, over 1,200 Times contributors and over 34,000 media workers signed an open letter citing “serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non⁠-⁠binary, and gender nonconforming people.” Over a hundred organizations, alongside GLAAD, signed a similar open letter. 

TNN was founded in July 2025 with the explicit aim of “empowering trans communities under fire from billionaire oligarchs with compassionate and well-informed independent journalism.” Co-founder David Forbes interviewed former Times editor Billie Jean Sweeney in Jan. 2026, who detailed her experience watching the Times increasingly move towards publishing anti-trans disinformation across her decade of experience at the paper. 

The Times responded by arguing that the Q&A promoted misinformation and fabricated conspiracy theories from the former editor, a response critiqued by other trans reporters. TNN chose not to publish the Times statement and said, “We do not have an obligation to publish damage control on the behalf of a news outlet undergoing a legitimacy crisis because of their own actions.”

Madisyn Parisi, an investigative reporter and writer of The Backbone, wrote a “fact-check of the fact-check” that pointed out the Times’ nitpicking of the interview. 

“Transgender journalists sounded the alarm at the New York Times, but they continued to knowingly publish anti-trans reporting that hurt real people,” Parisi wrote.

For TNN, this planted an initial seed for the boycott. But Lazine said the inciting moment came after a frenzy of right-wing press swept the news cycle when Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings made a sarcastic post justifying his use of the Times to a trans woman. 

Though Jennings asserted his allyship for the transgender community, “he got a lot of praise in a lot of news outlets for giving a kind of supportive statement after the fact,” Lazine said. “Meanwhile, the trans woman he was arguing with got harassed to such a degree that she was run off the site [Bluesky].”

She said the fallout from the incident represented a much larger issue: the lack of a resounding call for the transgender community to boycott the Times. 

Boycotts show a belief in a “better tomorrow”  

TNN’s boycott joins that of the collective WAWOG, which has been demanding readers divest, unsubscribe, and boycott the Times since 2024. Over 300 writers signed a statement to boycott the Times’ op-ed page last year until the paper’s editorial board calls for an U.S. arms embargo on Israel, conduct a review on anti-Palestinian bias and produce new editorial standards for Palestine coverage, and retract its highly-critiqued investigation “Screams Without Words.”  

FAIR has also covered how the Times’ editorial policies around restricting the use of the term “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” have set the tone for the paper’s coverage on Palestine. In a statement to The Intercept about the policies, spokesperson Stadtlander called the guidance “standard practice” for accuracy, consistency, and nuance — though an anonymous Times staffer pointed out that it takes occupation out of the coverage, “the core of the conflict.”

WAWOG organizer Chris Mills Rodrigo called TNN’s effort “fantastic.” 

“We welcome all critiques of the New York Times,” he said. “There’s a strong history of boycotts in general in the Palestine solidarity movement, and in particular, boycotts of media institutions and targeted campaigns.”  

In TNN’s boycott, the co-founders cite inspiration from the Palestinian Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement’s work and include a call for activists to mount campaigns against institutional shareholders of The New York Times to divest.

The campaign from WAWOG follows the same model. 

“We believe that the New York Times is a voice, a spokesperson for the ruling class,” Mills Rodrigo said. “We think that the ruling class’s goals and desires are opposed to the trans liberation movement and the Palestine liberation movement.” 

Certain strains of LGBTQ+ organizing in the United States have also been linked to anti-imperialist stances. The New York chapter of the organization ACT UP, which used direct action to help people with AIDS and create political power in the ‘80s and now focuses on LGBTQ+ health issues of all kinds, endorsed the Palestinian BDS movement in Jan 2024. Some members have also talked about their anti-war principles with Columbia Journalism School’s reporting project Uptown Radio. 

ACT UP’s various tactics — including boycotts — have been a large inspiration for WAWOG. The collective coined one of their editorial projects the New York (War) Crimes, a direct play on ACT UP’s 1980s “New York Crimes,” which responded to the Times’ inadequate coverage of the AIDS epidemic.  

History has also informed the TNN boycott, with co-founders citing successful boycotts against apartheid in South Africa and during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.  

For Lazine, boycotting gives her hope that things may change, and that transgender issues will not be swept under the rug and given the diligence they deserve. 

“Regardless of whether or not they decide to give into demands,” she said of the Times, “This can show just how much of an impact we can make, seeing people just band together and decide that we want to see a better tomorrow.” 

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Charlie Bloomer is a writer based in Oregon and New York covering social movements, arts, and culture.

This piece was edited by James Salanga. Copy edits by Marlee Baldridge.