Sweeney alleged that between 2023 and 2024, a “militant anti-union” and “pro-management” group of employees began leaking stories accusing the Times union of pro-trans stances. By the end of 2023, Times management announced a new communication policy “that essentially shut down all avenues for internal discussion.”
By 2024, the Times’ anti-trans bias informed coverage of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, according to Sweeney. She told Trans News Network that Sulzberger told reporters to treat both Democrats and Republicans “as having equal weight, in terms of factual basis, in terms of their viewpoints.” That meant giving equal weight to Republicans’ widespread embrace of misinformative, anti-trans rhetoric throughout the 2024 election cycle (a Times analysis found that GOP campaigns in over a dozen states spent over $65 million on anti-trans ads between August and October 2024).
Sweeney also pointed to the Times’ response to the infamous Cass Review, an April 2024 U.K. report on gender-affirming care for minors which claimed that evidence in support of medical treatment like puberty blockers is “shaky.” The report has faced condemnation from advocates, professional medical groups, and researchers for its “deeply flawed” methodology.
According to Sweeney, her international desk counterpart in London initially assigned a U.K. correspondent to cover the Cass Report’s publication. Although the correspondent’s reporting acknowledged that the Cass Review was a “very contentious, very political” document, within a few hours, Times editors reassigned the story to the science desk — more specifically, to Azeen Ghorayshi, “a key reporter in a lot of other anti-trans coverage.”
Of the Times’ management, Sweeney pointed to Sulzberger as the main proponent of the paper’s anti-trans shift.
“I think he saw this as a political project, that he could take a stance that the hard right would like, that the Trump campaign might like,” she said. “He thought it was something there’d be no cost for… except for trans people… no cost to [the Times’] broader reputation.”
She added that, in her view, the Times “put a stamp of legitimacy on medical falsehoods” and “legitimized anti-trans hate, really.”
In the meantime, Sweeney stressed the importance of independent news outlets covering trans news.
“I think [I’d like readers to know] that independent news sources are really vital, and that maybe just reading the Times and subscribing to the Times isn’t really the best investment of your money or your time,” she said.
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