Transgender news coverage surged in 2023 as lawmakers introduced a wave of anti-trans legislation, but new data shows that attention quickly dropped off—leaving much of the real-world impact on trans people underreported.
The Trans News Initiative is an interactive project that tracks five years of national coverage across more than 200 publications, analyzing how news organizations have covered transgender people.
The project—a collaboration among the Trans Journalists Association, the University of Miami School of Communication and Polygraph—reveals spikes in attention during legislative flashpoints are often followed by sharp declines, even as policies continue to reshape people’s lives.
Kae Petrin, a co-founder of the Trans Journalists Association, said the initiative grew out of years of recurring conversations with reporters and editors about gaps in coverage.
Petrin spoke about the initiative during a recent episode of the Gaily Show on WCPT 820, guest hosted by Windy City Times.
“There was a lot of sincere interest in, ‘I want to know more about that’ and ‘Is there any data [or] studies?’” Petrin said. “There wasn’t really a report that pulls this together [until now].”
The Trans News Initiative was built to fill that gap, using an existing media database to analyze national coverage over time. When Petrin and their colleagues stepped back to look at the data, one trend stood out immediately.
“All of us were really surprised to see that there’s this huge spike in coverage and interest in 2023,” Petrin said. “A lot of that is pinned to newsrooms covering the uptick in anti-trans bills proposed in 2022 and 2023.”
But the attention did not last.
“The thing that we see after that really huge increase in 2023 is that a lot of that interest dies off,” Petrin said. “It goes back to more normal levels, even though more bills are being proposed and more laws are passing over that same time period.”
The data also shows which narratives tend to dominate coverage during those moments of heightened attention.
“The things that really rise to the top in terms of journalists covering it consistently and repeatedly tend to be high-level, sort of ‘cancel culture’ debates,” Petrin said.
At the same time, stories that examine how laws are implemented, how people navigate new restrictions or how communities respond and adapt are far less common.
“You see a lot less coverage of the things that are actually happening to trans communities,” Petrin said. “There’s a lot less coverage… about pre-existing forms of discrimination or even just about creativity and the counter-narratives from trans people.”
Petrin emphasized that this pattern reflects a broader distinction between visibility and understanding. While newsrooms have made progress on language and terminology, deeper structural problems remain.
As a result, Petrin said, coverage often treats transgender lives as an abstract political debate rather than as the subject of reporting rooted in lived experience.
“We have a lot of breaking news, reactive coverage to topics,” Petrin said. “What I really want to see is more newsrooms coming back [after] this law has been there for one year, two years, three years—how is it being implemented?”
“We don’t see the sort of follow-up stories that are so crucial,” Petrin added.
While the Trans News Initiative focuses on data, Petrin said it is part of a broader effort by the Trans Journalists Association to address structural challenges in journalism. The organization also provides direct support to journalists through stipends, fellowships and safety resources.
The organization is also developing a coverage fellowship designed to support deeper reporting. “We’re going to create a small cohort of journalists and provide them funding to do some of these in-depth stories,” Petrin said.
The Trans Journalists Association also maintains a workplace and safety guide for journalists navigating harassment, digital security and professional transitions.
What has sustained Petrin, they said, is looking beyond headlines to the ways communities endure.
“Reading stories of survival, community building and how other people have found dignity and forged paths through lives, despite everything happening in the world, has brought me hope lately.”