It. It could happen here. It's the podcast that's called it Could Happen Here. Things fall apart and put them back together again, etcetera, et cetera. We're slightly rushing this intro because Garrison had to leave in like ten minutes, not ten minutes. But yeah, yeah, so we've spent a lot of time covering the sort of various aspects of the transgend aside we haven't The aspect of the angle we
haven't covered that much is The New York Times. And partially that's my fault because if I every time I've tried to write something about New York Times, it's devolved into about seven hours and be reading every single time The New York Times wrote an article that was pro Hitler. So you know, it's it's difficult to be what you would describe is reasonably objective when you're talking about these
people and not just start yelling about the Iraq War. However, coma other people have done a very very good job about this, and things have developed in the sort of world of the New York Times printing just incredibly bizarre transphobic articles and to talk about one of these things,
and some developments on one of their stories. We are talking to Evan erk Hard of Assigned Media, who has published a very very good story about some real nonsense that The New York Times in their journalists have gotten up to. So Fa, welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm always glad to talk about nonsense.
Yeah, it's been it's it's been a real time. Also here is Garrison. Yeah. So I guess, okay, I think the place to start with this is getting people caught up with the incredibly bizarre story of Jamie Reid. So I guess I wanted to start there. Can you talk a little bit about who Jamie Reid is and how the New York Times and a bunch of other very less reputable somehow newspaper has got involved with this.
Yeah, so, I mean there are certainly reputable newspapers that have looked into the allegations of former gender clinic staff member in Saint Louis, Jamie Reid, and those organizations, including local papers, have found that her allegations didn't hold up.
This was.
Months ago, kind of the beginning of the year. I believe she kind of came forward with great fanfare and an alliance defending freedom lawyer and said that the gender clinic she once worked at was harming children. They weren't engaging in informed consent. They were pressuring parents to go along with these harmful treatments, horrifying stuff that if true, would be just a major major scandal if true, and
the allegations all part pretty quickly. Numerous parents and patients came back, came, you know, forward saying this is nothing like what we've experienced. Some of that was pretty directly refuting things that she said, such as, you know, kids never got any therapy. They just saw a therapist for an hour and an undercanologist for an hour and were immediately.
Approved for hormones.
And so people came forward saying I did six months of therapy, I did nine months of therapy.
I wish you could do that. Like no, like right.
I mean, it was very wild and very discredited. And then for some reason, apparently back in May, as En Graaschi of the New York Times started looking into this story, and she didn't find anything different. I mean, if you look at her reporting, if anything, she found even more evidence that Jamie Reid is not accurate and not on the up and up. But the story that she came out with is really really weird.
And I think the thing, the thing that that is the most at least before before the most recent round of incredibly bizarre stuff, The thing that's the most infuriating to me about the sort of Jamie Reid's story is.
That the thing that had come out by the time The New York Times was writing about it was that it looked a lot like if you look at the stuff that Jamie Reid had been doing and people talking about their experiences with her, it looked like she was trying to sabotage kids getting healthcare because she personally didn't believe in it.
I talked to a parent, a parent who was also talked to by The New York Times, who had really just wanted like an educational visit for her like eight year old, and Jamie Reid said, we can't do anything for you.
Sorry.
Uh, you know, we can only bring you in if your child is an adolescent ready to go on hormone therapy. And so after the allegations came out, this parent got in touch with the clinic Jamie Reid had left, and they were like, what are you talking about. We do educational appointments all the time.
Come in.
They spent you know, almost two hours talking to the family about the different you know, medical possibilities in the far future and just you know, trying to help educate the kid about their body and their options years and years before they never need anything.
Yeah, which is really infuriating because like the actual story here is that you know, even even clinics that are like trying to do the right thing wind up with just incredibly deranged CIS people who basically can at every point in the process act as a gatekeeper and decide that like you don't get to get treatments, and that's
awful and is one of them. I mean, you know, even even in place, even even in parts of the US, at clinics that are good, that is a thing that can just happen to you, is you get these sort of gatekeeper stuff. But instead of doing that, instead of again covering the story they had been handed about someone trying to keep kids from getting health care.
They did this.
They you know, this this turned into this like like full court press against Wait, Gary, you you're right.
I closed my door because the air conditioner is way too loudly.
There's cats.
But now the cats start screaming at the door. But now I open the door, they and they don't want to come in. They're just like all the threshold, just like staring at me, like make a choice, come in on them out.
And I believe we're leaving this in.
This is great content.
They're out, They're gone. They had their chance. They blew it.
Yeah, what happens instead is this is this sort of like full court press with a bunch of you know, starting in sort of conservative media and then moving into sort of liberal media, like using this story as an example of like why why we have to like stop like we have to shut down clinics and stuff while.
Children's hospitals are getting bomb threats, yeah, constantly, mostly mostly due to kind of prodding by ghouls the Daily Wire who are hunting for clicks. And yeah, there's also a big part of this is like this tactic of attacking like healthcare centers and clinics proved to be a pretty good recipe to go viral. That's what the Daily Wire discovered.
And that's something that New York Times certainly took notice of as well, is that, hey, this is this is a way to drive a lot of attention towards our website. That is just another another angle about this, this sort of thing, which also, like it leads to real world consequences, not just in terms of healthcare getting restricted, but also
like threats of violence against doctors. The right has historically been completely willing to carry out acts of violence against healthcare workers and let alone you know, trying threatening to bomb a children's hospital.
Yeah, and the exact allegations were, We're really devastating.
For these families.
I mean, I love to Heidi, who's you know, her daughter's personal medical history was misrepresented, shared with the world, shared in a million articles, and used to fuel gender firming care bands, you know, I mean that is like really damaging for a like seventeen eighteen year old who's just trying to like live her life in kind of a conservative town.
Which also and this is an another aspect of this, is like she is sharing the private medical history of patients at a clinic, which you are not allowed to do. That is a which is very funny for people who rant about these all of these people all the time.
Only we finally got one.
We finally got an actual hippo violation.
And uh yeah, I.
Think the Hippa thing has been I mean, you know, as Zingeration could have gotten that story, I feel, I mean, I think it's been really undercovered. My understanding is that healthcare workers are not supposed to have to share information that's identifiable to the patient. And we have a patient
saying I can tell this was my story. And so again I'm not a lawyer, but I think that people have underestimated the extent to which real families could look at these allegations and say, this is me, twisted, distorted, used to hurt my family and other families like mine, And there's kind of no outrage about that. It's kind of this neglected backwater of this story.
Yeah, and I mean, I mean, the thing it reminds me the most of is the is the original like vaccines cause autism story where you have someone who is incredibly politically motivated, who is incredibly unreliable, who's demlishrably unreliable, who is not someone who's you know, who's someone who in the field, Everyone's like, what is going on here? This is complete nonsense, who like misrepresents and just straight
up lies about about like about about their patients. And then also it turns out like has abused their patients, or in this case is not has abuse of patients, and in this case case like has successfully like stopped parents from being able to talk to the clinic about what the options for their kids are. But the media sort
of doesn't care about that all. All they all they see is sort of this story and they they just sort of latch onto it, and then they spread all of this stuff and it's like, you know, it reminds it reminds me a lot of that where like, wait, we're still dealing with the consequences of just the completely fake bullshit about like vaccism, vaccines supposedly causing autism, which and again like that that's stuffing that never that never would have gotten mainstreamed if the media hadn't picked it
up and ran with it. And yet you know, every single time one of these absolute like politically motivated frauds like gets up on the stands, like there there's the New York Times doing doing their article about it, and and like.
This used to be like Glenn Beck's territory, who would like bring out like a chocobar didn make like a make like a crazy wall with you like yarn and string and now it's it actually has been relegated to the New York Times, the sort of the sort of coverage that they're doing over these types of like moral
panics around healthcare. I think, like if if you look at like Fox News twenty years ago, this was the type of stuff that they did for a long time before it was actually a little bit too insane and they had to like fire Glenn Beck, and it's it's this. It's the same sort of stuff now that's propagated by people like The Daily Wire and then picked up on by even more kind of mainstream publications.
I mean, I think what's so insidious about this story in particular and some of the other New York Times stories is that they represent this as being their deep investigative journalism. They represent this as being the finest that the Times produces. And here is you know, the mother of a trans girl who went to the reporter and said, I can prove to you I have medical records, I have emails to prove to you that what is in
this allegation is about my family and isn't true. The reporter takes that and kind of sticks it in at the end, you know, like that it's not lying, but it is so totally distorting the truth that it feels like lying.
It feels worse than lying almost.
Yeah, especially because there's like like thousands of people who will just read the headline. They're not going to scroll to the bottom of the thing and read a little disclaimer and be like haha, jakay lie.
Not everything that's not good enough. Yeah, and I think this gets into the party. So you very recently talked to the mother of one of the girls who was you know, who who read has been lying about and.
To three of the parents who who Zine had talked to.
Yeah, and you discovered some very disturbing and incredibly bizarre stuff that a Zene was doing to get parents to stay in the story. After reads and like this was in your follow up story, after a bunch of people came out and were like, Hey, this is like not correct. This person has in fact been lying about this. Yeah, So you could you go into what you found about this?
Yeah, it was truly truly bizarre. I mean I going in There were some parents that contacted me because they'd spoken to a Zene Grayishi and they were really upset about the story. And you know, I went into it thinking I'm going to do them a favor, I'm going to let them feel heard. They feel disappointed about the story. This kind of happens in journalism.
I was not expecting what I got.
So this parent had been very suspicious of a Zene because of Azine's previous writing about trans issues, and so I think she and her family kind of were very cautious and very savvy, and they said, we don't want to be part of a story that's going to be negative on this clinic that we feel saved our daughter's life.
So you know, I'm willing to talk to you, I'm willing to give you this information about this person who lied about our daughter's history, but if you're going to turn that into a hit piece on the clinic.
We don't want to be part of it.
And A Zene, you know, reassured her, calmed her fears, and so you know they were going forward but cautiously. And then this mother sees a zine at a courthouse where Jamie Reid was testifying about the allegations in Missouri and just sees the warm relationship between A Zene and Jamie Reid, and she thinks something isn't right here. I helped her catch this person in a lie. But they're all,
you know, buddy, buddy, that seems weird. So she, you know, she first went up to Jamie Reid and confronted her. She said, I'm liver toxicity mom, and you know, she again noticed that Jamie Reid is kind of saying how can I help you? What do you want and like looking to a Zine like save me from this crazy person. And so that's when the mother said, we're out. We're not We're not going to be part of the story. And a Zene did not take that for answer. Yeah,
it's nuts. She followed them to their car. As they're trying to leave, she stood in the car door so they couldn't drive away, saying, you know, please keep talking, to keep talking. You know, I need I don't know exactly what she's saying, but like I need you in the story. And you know, the mom says, like, no, Zine,
we're out. Could please step away from the car, and they drove away, and then Azine called them and called them and they picked up, and a Zine managed to convince them to let her come over to their hotel room.
This is the night before the New York Times article published, and so now Heidi and her husband and Zene are in this hotel room and a Zene is going paragraph by paragraph telling her everything that's in the story, trying to convince her that it's not a hit piece on the clinic, and the family isn't buying it at all. The family is like, no, you're describing a hit piece on the clinic.
Where Yeah, But.
They're left with this horrible, horrible conundrum because if they actually pull out of the article, which as far as I can tell, they really did have this agreement. Again, azine wouldn't talk to me, so like it's a little unclear what the agreement was or exactly what's going on here. But in the end they decided, you know, there's no evidence that this woman lied if we pull out of the story. So they felt that they had kind of
no choice. Even though they felt completely betrayed, completely devastated that their story was going to be used in this way, they felt they had no choice but to stay in.
Yeah, and then like the and the way that like it ends, the article like is is basically like the article is like completely supportive of Jamie Reid, even though again demolishrably in the article she is lying.
Such a weird article.
You find someone's lying, but you're still spending all of your words saying, well, so she's say she lied this one time, but she's basically credible.
Just bizarre.
Yeah, and then you know, and the New York Times is response to this is like the piece you're referring to was rigorously a reporter and edited and thoughtful and sensitive to the moment. The Times stands behind his publication imberservely. It's like, well, yeah, of course, of course it meets the New York Times like incredibly demanding standards for journalism.
These are the people who published like these are the people who published the yellow Cake Uranium story, like these people like these people have published things that like a a like these are these people have published off about the Iraq War that like British tabloids wouldn't publish. So like, yeah, it's it's not it's not I don't I don't think it's that surprising to me that, like the New York
Times was like this passion editorial standards. But that's because again, the New York Times backed Hitler and like deliberately go forth the entire country. You're starting a war by straight up lying about a bunch of stuff they do was fake.
Let me take a moment and say, there are a lot of reporters who work for the New York Times who do really great work, very very occasionally it's even about trans issues. But like it is certainly not a monolith of ridiculous nonsense. It's just all of the good work kind of camouflages the ridiculous nonsense and lets them get it through when they when they go on a tear, when they go on a crusade against you know, against someone.
Yeah, And I mean it's it's they. I don't know, The New York Times, they they pick, they pick their moments to get incredibly ideological about this, and then they hide behind the more normal reporting they do in order to sort of like disguise the fact that again there's sort of this person knows that their sources lie, is
demonstrably lying to them. I just I don't know, it's it's the thing that was interesting to me about the story too, is that as zen As, someone who up until this point like seems to it like like from everything I had been aware of a zine from.
Asinine did really good me too, reporting. I believe, yeah, science any commany.
In astronomy, which I like. The thing I don't talk about enormously was that I did astronomy for a little bit. I didn't do very much astronomy, but there was a there was a small amount of time where I wanted to do astronomy, and so, like I knew a bunch of the people like in that scene a zine had a very very good rep there as like the person you could go to to talk about, like like to do a B two story, which makes it even more weird that, you know, I guess this is just I
don't know. I'm hesitant to just brush this off as sort of like trans brain where like some like a sister reporter starts covering trans stuff just completely loses their mind.
But you know, it's it's a really startling and disturbing like shift from this person who had a very very good rep on yes, like as someone you could go to to, like her standing in someone's car door trying to stop a family from driving away because they want to because they don't want to be involved in a story where she's lying about them.
Who could have thought that a radical feminist could be trans exclusionary.
It's just crazy. People are complicated.
It I think has to do with who she feels sympathy for, and women in science are maybe people that she feel sympathy for and who she or I have no idea what reason doesn't And like innocent parents of trans youth are apparently people she doesn't really have that empathy for, have.
That ability to, or the kids themselves apparently.
I mean, as a transperson, I never expect a reporter to for me. But these white parents, these middle class white parents, please, you must take them seriously.
The other thing I think I wanted to talk about was the impact that this reporting has had on the broader So we we alluded to this a little bit, but yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about the way that right wing sort of right wing lawyers, like right wing politicians have been using like specifically this coverage and also sort of like the fear mongering around gender clinics as something they're using to support, like health to support healthcare bands on trans youth.
Yeah, Jamie Read's allegations directly resulted in a ban on gender affirming care in Missouri. You know, there were families that were going to the legislature week after week, and we're keeping it at bay, and then these allegations came out and it fell apart and the caravan was passed.
And you know, it would be.
Bad enough if they found a bad clinic, but you know, there's nothing miraculous about doctors who treat trans people that makes them incapable of being an ethical you know, like it would have been devastating if it was the truth, but for it to have been, you know, all based on lies, is it's just a really tough blow.
Yeah, I mean, like you know, like I have friends there, and it's it's like it's bleak right now, and I think I've been really you know, I mean, I don't know why I would I expected these people to sort of like even remotely feel a single emotion about the fact that directly the stuff, the actions that they did led directly to a bunch of kids losing their healthcare.
But you know, there's been no there's been no reckoning with this right as best I can tell, neither New York Times nor any of the journalists, involve, any of the editors, any publishers, none of the people seem to care at all about the fact that they're about their work directly is leading to the suffering and possibly death of children.
And I don't know, like I I this is one of those things where like either either something about this changes and you know, we get to a point where it's unacceptable to sort of do this kind of stuff, or we just you know, we wait for the next round of journalists to like find some absolute crank who they like dug out of some like Derain Superbub mc mansions somewhere to like push push another one of these stories.
Because right now, like this is this is disappears to just be an established path that you can use to sort of like you know, like from from both ends. Right, it's the thing you can use as the journalist's advantage career, and is the thing you can use as like a crank to be suddenly on the talk show start going to get a bunch of money. It's just lying about all of this stuff, yep.
And I mean, you know, you try to inject some accountability, but you can't make people listen. Yeah, this is what I do every day, and I'm going to keep doing it. But I'm under no illusions that since people are necessarily going to start listening. It's just you got to put it out there.
Yeah.
So, I guess two more things I wanted to ask about before we sort of wrap up. One is, Okay, so, on the off chance that there are SIS journalists listening to this, what kinds of things would you recommend to them to, like, to make to make sure you a don't fall down this rabbit hole and b to make sure that if you are attempting to write a story that is good, that you get things right.
Yeah.
So, the Trans Journalist Association recently published an updated style guide, which I would absolutely suggest people check out because it's much more in depth than anything that I can can say. But I think that the biggest pitfall people have is thinking that they understand more than they do so and I think that the kind of connected pitfall is just a where there's smoke, there's fire, like, well, there must be more to the skeptical side than there really is.
So while I, you know, always try to butter journalists up by saying you can make up your own mind and you know, look at the evidence, like, really engage with trans people who are not just telling their stories, but who are science reporters themselves, like myself, really engage with experts who are not trans, but who understand this medical information and are representatives of a mainstream medical consensus, and really try to, you know, understand that the experts
are experts for a reason, and the mainstream consensus is a mainstream consensus for a reason. And don't be so quick to just assume that a bunch of activists and cranks know something that everyone else is trying to keep from you, because that is a conspiratorial mindset that is below you as a mainstream cisgender journalist, and that you wouldn't be falling into with you know, masks or anti
vacs or whatever. And it's just because trans people are marginalized that I think people are kind of falling for this crap and getting rolled.
You are not ye conspiratorial thing. Yeah, well this is this is something. This is something I'm going to talk about at length more in one day. The like sixty five thousand word thing that I've been writing about, the lab leak stuff is going to come out. And you know, one of the god I have I have spent so many hours talking to epidemiologists. You have no idea, but one of the things that you know comes up there,
and it comes up also just in general science. Conspiratism is if someone like people who actually do normal science do not start yelling about how they're being censored by the scientific establishment and like there's a giant conspiracy to stop them from talking about their work, even people who legitimately are being like actually screwed over by scientific establishment, right, people who have been abused, people you know, like people
of color, people from marginalized backgrounds, who like I like, I know these people, right, I grew up with a bunch of these people. They don't talk like this about that. The only people who talk like this are absolute cranks. And it would be really great if journalists realized that actual scientists don't talk about science in a way where they're like, ah, the medical establishment is censoring me. Would I would love for that to happen. I don't know.
I'm skeptical that it will happen because it's it's a great story.
Everyone knows that there are times when the medical or when the medical or scientific establishment is wrong.
You, as a lay journalist.
Are probably not going to be able to tell I am sorry which times those are so slow? Your role don't envision Pulitzers and get grounded on you know what the basics are, instead of thinking that you kind of know better than the people who spend their lives researching. This is my entreaty to journalists who maybe don't realize how transphobia might be playing a role in there, wanting to believe certain things.
Yeah, and I guess the last thing I wanted to ask you about, Uh, yeah, I wanted to ask you about the trans Data Library because I'm very excited about this. This sounds rad.
Yeah, So you know, a few months ago I started working, you know, with some other people in the trans community, most of whom are you know, staying anonymous on a resource to try and help people who you know, we're really envisioned people who are in good faith, but trans issues are not their main thing, you know what I mean.
So like not someone not as.
Ingoti, but maybe a Zingerati of five years ago, you know what I mean, the person who is a journalist who wants to get the story right, but there's so much misinformation out there, There's so many groups with so many different names. They're very skilled sometimes as presenting themselves as you know, legitimate. So this is The Transdata Library upcoming hopefully by the end of the month, is going to be a kind.
Of you know, Wikipedia for the user.
Not Wikipedia and not like edible by the community, because that's very bad idea for trade stuff. A resource on what are these groups, who are these activists, what have they done in the past. It is intended as a journalistic resource, not an activist resource, which just means, you know, if someone is there isn't anyone like this. But if someone is a Nobel Prize winning scientist, we're not going to pretend they didn't, you know what I mean. If
someone has legitimate potentials, you will find that out. If someone has said things that are discrediting, you'll find that out. But it isn't just a list of the most discrediting
things someone has said. And we are going to, you know, directly try to get this out to journalists, local journalists, particularly people again who have decent coverage, not people who are you know, already on a tear and to democratic politicians who similarly are you know, sympathetic but might need an extra source of information.
And yeah, it is, it is coming.
I want people to be aware of it so that they can start spreading it and sharing it when it does, so that we can hopefully try to, you know, just get some basic information into the hands of people who I think desperately need it. They may not know that they desperately need it, but desperately need basic information on some of these groups and some of these bad actors.
I think that's definitely a good thing because there is a lot of information out there on the connections between you know, the sort of right wing grifters who come out of the woodworks talking about this stuff, and you know, they're they're they're they're they're sort of demonstrable links to far right extremist groups, to the Proud Boys, to you know,
sort of right wing think tanks. But that's stuff that like, the the subset of trans people who spend their time doing this are all very well aware of, but the reporters who are sort of venturing into the space for the first time don't know about it all. And yeah, having having a thing we can put into their laps being like, hey, this is these are all the people who are like getting paid by the Lions defending freedom and stuff. Yeah, that's what.
I'm hoping to make.
So the u r L is probably going to be trans Data Library dot org. It is a little broken right now, go to a sidemedia dot org. You know, follow me, follow my Twitter, follow my project, and watch that space for the trans Data Library because I'm hoping it can do some good.
Yeah, I'm excited for it. And yeah, do you have anything else you want to say before we close out?
I think that's it for me. Thank you so much for having me on. This was really fun.
And yeah, yeah, thanks for coming and thanks thanks for reporting on this story because lord knows, the rest of the media wasn't going to do it.
That's why I started doing it.
All right, this has been It can happen here. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, It happened here, pods and yeah, go into the world and be better about this. The New York Times, which is not an enormously high bar, but it's a bar they consistently failed across. So you too could be superor. Have superior journalistic ethics The New York Times.
Ah, this is what I tell myself every day.
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