The New York Times often writes about trans issues—but they rarely quote actual trans people in their coverage.
That’s according to a new analysis by Assigned Media, which tracked news coverage of trans issues across 10 U.S. publications between January and April 2026
Assigned Media identified 214 stories from the New York Times that contained either the words “trans,” “transgender,” “gender identity,” “gender ideology” or “biological sex” during that time window. For comparison, Assigned Media found 130 stories in those same parameters by the Associated Press and 110 by the Washington Post.
It’s important to note that those numbers correlate to a wide range of coverage areas: including news articles, op-eds, culture pieces and other stories that might briefly mention one of the target keywords. When it comes to stories specifically about trans issues, the NYT published 60 news stories focused on trans people, compared to 51 by the Associated Press and 25 by the Washington Post.
Assigned Media was able to compare one metric across the board: how often actual trans people were quoted in stories about trans issues. The NYT came in last with just 20 percent of its news stories about the trans community quoting a trans person or representative of a trans organization. And many of the other mainstream news outlets didn’t do much better, with NBC News and the AP just ahead of them at 29 percent.
This report follows a similar one from the Trans Journalists Association last year, which tracked news coverage of trans issues during Trump’s first 100 days. Their analysis found that only 30 percent of stories about Trump’s executive orders defining gender as biological sex quoted a single trans person.
But not every outlet did as poorly as the NYT in Assigned Media’s findings. Fifty percent of NPR’s stories about trans issues featured at least one quote from a trans person, while independent outlet The 19th outperformed the rest with 70 percent.
The New York Times has consistently been criticized for inaccurate reporting on trans issues that has had real ramifications on the rights of trans people in the U.S., so these numbers may not be too surprising. But this report helps to quantify how the newspaper disproportionately covers trans issues without trans perspectives.
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