Thread by @HeatherBoerner

After 10+ yrs covering #HIV and 25+ yrs as a journalist, I'm taking a step back from the grind to do something I think is just as important. I will miss HIV coverage. And I have Things To Say about the way legacy journalism supports white supremacy/misogyny.

Especially the way science/health journalism falls into the two-sides myth and the way the threat of "bias" is used to uphold white supremacy/misogyny/trans/queerphobia and all the other -isms.

I have done a lot of journalism. I have been a self-employed journalist for nearly 19 years. I have written for daily newspapers and big health sites. I spent five years building up the HIV coverage at @Medscape and later contributed some work I'm proud of for @WebMD

Over my 25+ yrs, I've been called on to justify why my approach to journalism is unbiased. Over and over again. And my answer when it comes to HIV/LGBTQ science especially is always the same:

➡️Junk science/misinfo has a long legacy in medicine: eugenics, phrenology, "wandering uteruses," inversion, supposed bio differences between races, the supposed inability of Black ppl to feel pain ... all were settled "science" used to justify racial & gender codes of oppression

As science journalists, we have an obligation to differentiate junk science from real science. We keep fighting this fight on individual issues: no, vaccines don't cause autism; yes, climate change is real.

What we have not and continue to fail to do in modern times is be brave enough to debunk the junk science that legacy journalism says is best handled by "both sides" journalism. e.g., we continue to report on scientific/medical claims against abortion as tho it's reasonable

This came up recently when a new-to-me editor at @WebMD asked me to report a story about parents raising money to leave Texas following that state's administration deciding to follow junk science rationalizing separating trans kids from supportive families.

In the process, the editor asked me to talk to parents on the other side, who had moved their kids out of states like CA & NY to *prevent* their kids from transitioning.

Having covered trans stuff for several years, I understood that none of the science backed up those parents' arguments (presented to me on a webpage for a group of anti-trans parents w/a "science" section full of outdated and debunked research.

thedailybeast.com/transgender-a-…

I will not link to that group. But I will say that I spent a dark afternoon going through almost every "article" claiming to prove that the parents' objections were correct. I found
➡️letters to the editor referencing outdated/debunked studies
➡️case series (not as good as RCTs)

Notably, the single cases or series are not as high quality as randomized control trials, which have been done more recently with better methodology and more people.

For instance, some of the science they reference, say around the negative impact of puberty blockers for trans kids, was based on cis girls with a rare condition called early puberty--some as early as just 2 years old.

Those kids stayed on puberty blockers much much longer--years and years longer than any trans kids in these studies.

The list goes on: bias in the recruitment, bias in the fact that the researchers misgendered their patients, bias in the assumption of mental illness or something that needed to be corrected.

In addition, as a queer person, I remember all these rationales being used about queer people, as well. I also remember being in college and looking up the supposedly scientific reasons women (white, cis, Euro women) couldn't read, think, or do for themselves.

I remember the pray the gay away camps, the ex-gay ministries. All of them used the same junk rationale and approach. APA used to characterize queer people as mentally ill & in need of changing. As a journalist, knowing this background informs my understanding of anti-transness

That alone would not be sufficient to have me push back against this editor. But the ability to review science and understand good science from bad science gave me an edge over reporters who, knowing nothing about the science, would do both-sides coverage.

This is my superpower, NOT a bias that makes me incapable of reporting rationally. The idea of that itself is based in white supremacy: You have to know nothing about a topic to cover it; if you know nothing, you might think oppressive systems don't exist.

It might indeed be debatable. This is the harm of both sides, supposedly neutral reporting. We're meant to report as if we know nothing of the subject. But having no experience of discrimination IS ITSELF a bias. We need to stop kidding ourselves act this.

So what I did with @WebMD (and I am calling them out publicly only after months of consideration bc they are a giant HEALTH and SCIENCE platform that should be held accountable) was tell the editor all of this.

I said this is a false equivalency. I said, we would not interview the parent of an immunocompromised child about the real danger of low vaccination rates & put on equal footing the opinions of a parent who thinks vaccines cause autism. We just wouldn't.

Not anymore, anyway. Not until AFTER a whole lot of damage has been done. As a field we have debated this. We have changed our approach, to say all the real science if we do platform someone sharing junk science, or we don't quote them at all. that was my argument.

The response I got? I wasn't doing solid journalism. I had to include both sides.

I asked him to consider trusting my expertise. That's why he hired me, after all. I told him I was trying to keep them from making a huge mistake.

Readers, I have to tell you that a press person for this anti-trans parents group had the ear of one of the other editors there. I finally looked at their coverage. It had been HORRENDOUS. ONLY featuring the supposed "brave" researchers who were touting junk science.

The bias in their reporting was palpable.

So here I was, a reporter with expertise and news judgment, trying to help this publication do better journalism and being rewarded with accusations of being a BAD journalist. I had already talked to a few sources, including @PinkRangerLB.

My editor suggested HE would do the interview with the anti-trans parents and put it in the story. I said Absolutely not. I will not have my name on THAT kind of junk science journalism (did not use that phrase. At the time I was attempting diplomacy.)

Finally, we agreed that I would back out of the story. He asked me to give him the contact info for the sources he'd suggested I reached out to. Professionally, I couldn't think of a reason I could deny that.

But I did reach out to my sources and let them know that the pub was going to do a "both sides" approach with anti-trans parents.

The result was that the story never ran, and I believe @WebMD has made an attempt to institute new policies for better trans coverage. I know they have hired at least one trans reporter to write about trans care. So that's good.

And I ended up writing a story for @sciam on the real science of trans care for young people. It has been a highlight of my career. scientificamerican.com/article/what-t…

This is all of a piece of a concern I expressed at the beginning of the year about the dearth of editors at @Medscape who were LGBTQ and could parse the press asks they got with more skill.

https://twitter.com/HeatherBoerner/status/1487266860466847752?s=20&t=FwHnoQPixy4T6pka16sEfg

I learned after sending this tweet that this appalling headline was written by a marketing person, not an editor. But the critique stands. If they had a single trans person in marketing, this would not have made it out the door.

But this, dear readers, apparently was a fatal tweet. I can't speak to what happened internally with @Medscape (which is owned by @WebMD). But what happened to me was that after this blow up with @WebMD, I was informed by my lovely HIV editor that he could no longer hire me.

I suspect, though I don't have proof, that that old refuge-of-scoundrels excuse was used on the Medscape side to accuse my five years of writing some of the best HIV journalism in the country for them, of bias.

I never did get an official explanation for their sudden change of heart. But it happened soon after the @WebMD debacle. What I will say is that if Medscape chose their pride over accurate journalism, it has bigger problems than me.

I stand by my journalism at Medscape. I am immensely proud of what I was able to accomplish, especially with such a broad audience. And I'm grateful to my many wonderful editors who are still there and still trying to do good work.

See, just like all the other structural biases, it's not the individuals. I love my Medscape and WebMD editors to this day. But the system is broken. The assumption of knowing nothing and both sides doesn't serve science journalism.

I'm looking forward to moving into a position where the science really is what matters most.

And I don't know if I'll ever forgive this company for profiting off my labor, my expertise and my news judgement to the point of asking me what stories were worth assigning, and then dumping me for a tweet. Or for daring to not be a cis het white dude without expertise.

Finally, I will say that I could have stayed in journalism. I could have found other platforms for my journalism. This experience didn't ruin me in any kind of way. It cemented my commitment to "journalism w moral force," as my @propublica t-shirt says

But, y'all, I'm tired. I'm tired of working so hard, for so long for so little money and no job security, only to be accused of bias one too many times. I love journalism, but the system of journalism didn't want me. I hope to be back some day. But for now, I need a breather.

I will add: I know I lasted longer than many people, especially BIPOC people who have to weather this bias accusation more persistently and (I suspect) with much more hostility than I've faced. Going to @columbiajourn and being a white cis lady made a difference.

Since this post is getting some traction, you should consider buying my book, in which I explained the science of #UequalsU, the dawn of #PrEP, women, conception, and sex: amazon.com/Positively-Neg…

@healthreporters @nlgja some career news.

Obviously in this thread I'm talking specifically about trans health. But I've tried to accurately cover HIV care for BIPOC folks, as well, and I've covered women and HIV, which is deeply underreported in the U.S., too. All of these same lessons apply.