On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that contributors at The New York Times criticizing the paper’s coverage of transgender issues shows that The New York Times is “a very woke newspaper” and the newsroom “is not a balanced place.”
Maher said, “[T]hey presented the other side — shall we say — in the trans debate, and they’re a very woke newspaper now, and so, there was a huge pushback internally. A lot of the — I think a majority of the people who work at the Times basically said, we can’t even present this other side. And the other side is not crazy. We’re talking about something that is very new, we’re talking about something that involves children, we’re talking about something that involves permanently disfiguring your body or changing your body, which has great ramifications for your physical health in general. So, to their credit, I must say, the Times pushed back, and they said, no, we are going to try to be evenhanded about this. But it just shows you what the newsroom is today. The Times’ newsroom is not a balanced place.”
He added, “It seemed crazy for the Times to be having this little brouhaha…this week, just when a story came out — The Free Press printed it — from a whistleblower, someone — her name is Jamie Reed — I thought liberals loved whistleblowers, but apparently not in this — she’s someone who worked in a clinic that does transgender operations or treatment. This is a first-person account, this is someone who worked there. It’s a sworn affidavit. By the way, she says she’s a queer woman, married to a trans man, and politically, she says…’to the left of Bernie Sanders.’ And she says, ‘I personally witnessed [Washington University Pediatric Transgender Center] healthcare providers lie to the public and to parents of patients about the treatment, or lack of treatment, and the effects of treatment provided to children at the Center.’ If you have this first-person sworn affidavit, wouldn’t you pull back at the Times and say, okay, maybe this side should be heard out?”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
