Ethics

Most news media have condemned the article on Dr. V pointing out that her being transgender should not have been discussed in the article and some have also condemned the apology as rationalization for their ignorance. That the apology also furthers the belief that trans-people are deceitful. Fallon Fox in a Time editorial said,

Time and time again I’ve been flabbergasted at the lack of understanding in media in regards to why trans people may omit or even lie in some situations about their past.  As if the reasoning for protecting oneself in a country where violence and discrimination of trans people isn’t obvious. I’ve sat and pondered why some in media can be so cruel to us.

Some news outlets have attacked the backlash against the story. Rod Dreher said in the American Conservative that,

I want journalists to be more broadly educated about the people and the subjects they cover. I do not want journalists to be dictated to by activists or activist groups of the left or right who believe they have the right to set the bounds for what is acceptable coverage of their constituencies. These organizations and activists have the right to voice their own opinions, of course, but I wish they would take the Stanley Crouch approach, versus the Spike Lee approach. In the 1980s, Spike Lee gave an interview in which he said that black people need to become more powerful in Hollywood to “control” their image. Crouch, a professional critic who is also black, spoke out against this, saying that the more defensible goal is to expand the portrayals of blacks in film rather than to control them. Intimidating a newspaper or magazine into refusing to run a story you dislike displays a certain strength, no doubt, but more fundamentally it betrays weakness.

What Mr. Dreher does seem to understand is that what the “activists or activist groups” including news professionals are saying is that her being transgender did not bear on the validity of her credentials. It is not about “’control’ their image” it is about reporting fact relevant to a story. It is like reporting on a robbery, the color of their skin is not important, it would be important if the article was about the percentage of crimes by race or if the police was still looking for the person and it was included in the police description. If the story was “two men dressed as security guards robbed in front of a bank” it is irrelevant the color of their skin, the same thing about her being transgender it was not part of the story about fraudulent credentials.