If 2023 is anything to go by, 2024 will see a continued wave of attacks on trans people, driven by politicians who believe they can weaponize our existence as a wedge issue to electoral success and victory in the “culture wars.”

And if 2023 is anything to go by, I predict 2024 will continue to see many mainstream news organizations unwittingly and unquestioningly accept and adopt those right-wing frames and talking points in their coverage, contributing to falling public support for trans rights, and more broadly for LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized communities.

I hope desperately that I’m wrong. But I fear I’ll be right.

What the public needs — in a pivotal election year — is more, and better, coverage of the forces and motivations behind this single-minded legislative onslaught and the real-world impact of the hateful rhetoric and bills already passed — on trans and cis people, institutions, companies and communities. And about how the methods and tactics employed in this battle are already being deployed in other campaigns.

That may seem obvious, but it’s proven an uphill battle so far.

How else to explain the tens of thousands of words this year and last devoted to questioning whether trans people have too much access to health care, rather than to understanding the forces behind legislation to deny us that care? How else could a major news organization devote a major investigative report on the sliver of trans people who regret their transitions rather than on the many tens of thousands who don’t have the opportunity to transition to begin with? Or how else could an in-depth story about a clinic faced with an increase in trans minors question whether those minors really needed care rather than focus on how the healthcare system was failing them.

I get it: Trans people make up less than 2% of the population. We’re strange; we’re hard to understand or empathize with; our experiences are so very different from most journalists’.

But newsrooms have to do better.

Reporters and editors have unconscious biases. In the case of trans people, that often manifests in worrying more about people who may mistakenly identify as trans — and regret that decision — than about the challenges that trans people face.

Stories about puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, for example, usually profile someone who received medical interventions and is pleased with the results, and contrasts their experience with someone who regrets their decisions. Sounds balanced? Left out are the people who couldn’t access care, and their experiences. That’s akin to covering abortion care and only profiling women who managed to get abortions, and never looking at the people who tried and failed to get the procedure.

Similarly, stories will often highlight the plight of someone who, having had medical interventions for gender-affirming care, now regrets the changes and is trapped in a body that they don’t recognize and are profoundly uncomfortable with.  And truly, your heart goes out to them. But the stories rarely feature trans people who were denied such care and now also suffer in a body they don’t recognize and are profoundly uncomfortable with.

One group’s pain is privileged; the other’s, invisible.

And let’s not even ask why the International Chess Federation thinks trans women can’t compete — in chess! — in the women’s category. Few newsrooms dug even shallowly into that obvious question when news broke of its ban earlier this year; most stayed content to quote “both sides” of what seems at the very least to be a bizarre decision.

There’s more, but you get the idea.

We have to do better. One good place to start is the Trans Journalists Association’s expanded style guide, which helps orient reporters to the key questions and issues to think about; another is this excellent piece in Columbia Journalism Review. You could do a lot worse, too, than listen to a fantastic podcast between Masha Gessen and Lydia Polgreen about the broader narratives surrounding gender and gender identity.

Getting language right, and being sensitive in reporting, is critical when covering trans issues. But even more important is asking what story should be done in the first place.

If you’re covering access to abortion care, do you sic your crack investigative team on the sub-1% of women who regret their abortions, or on the multiple attempts to deny them care? Both are entirely legitimate stories. But in newsrooms with limited resources, which one serves the public interest best?

Rather than chasing the nth story picking through the accepted medical consensus about gender-affirming care, how about digging into day-to-day issues that are already affecting people’s lives?

How will states implement bans on procedures if patients have one kind of diagnosis (gender dysphoria) but not another? How will companies handle travel for trans employees who have to visit states with bathroom bans? What procedures will schools have to come up with to verify the gender at birth of students to comply with sports trans bans? There’s no shortage of stories that really matter.

To be clear: I’m not hoping for or expecting or wanting just happy or positive coverage; we should dig into all the issues and let the facts lead us where they may. But we should apply the same standards of good journalism to covering trans issues that we hold all our other stories to. The standards that require us to see past our blind spots, to challenge our preconceived ideas and to see the world through the eyes of our subjects.

Far too often we don’t.

At a TJA panel at a conference recently, a member of the audience asked if there was a quick way to think about getting trans coverage right. My answer was simple: Take whatever story you were thinking of doing, and substitute the word “abortion” or “vaccines” or “Asian” wherever you see “trans.” If the story reads well, then you’re on the right track; if it doesn’t, then perhaps you should ask yourself why.

Here’s hoping we pass that test more often next year.