My name is Liana DeMasi, and I’m the LGBTQ+ editor here at OptOut. You might have caught Tom Scocca’s latest in POPULA. The piece takes an insightful and comprehensive look at the pervasive anti-trans rhetoric being pushed out by corporate and legacy media.

From The New York Times to The Atlantic and Reuters, Scocca examines the reporting in mainstream publications that many people trust.

However, when it comes to reporting on trans lives, these publications, the NYT in particular, miss the mark time and time again. Its coverage is directly adding fuel to an already steady fire. There’s a growing list of over 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills popping up all over the nation. These laws and the rhetoric that surrounds them directly harm my community and its children. The work I do as a queer person, as a journalist, is to help usher in a world of truth and safety for trans and queer children so that they have the chance to be trans and queer adults.

With independent media, we have the chance to hear from a more diverse set of people who don't answer to corporate owners and shareholders and don't work under institutional bias or forced "bothsidesism." Simply, the stakes are too high for anything less.

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