As a transgender woman who built my journalistic career at the pioneering progressive digital network The Young Turks (TYT), walking away from a brand synonymous with “speaking truth to power” was the hardest professional decision I’ve ever made. But after years growing increasingly alarmed by TYT’s peddling of misinformation targeting trans communities – while rebuffing internal calls for responsibility – I realized that leaving the only media home I’d ever known was the only principled stand left to take.
This is my insider’s account of the disturbing editorial direction, crumbling ethics, external backlash and utter lack of accountability that forced me to take a stand against an organization still paying lip service to values they’ve long since abandoned.
Breaking Faith: When a Progressive Bastion Betrays the Underdogs
I first joined TYT during the 2016 election – an optimistic freshman commentator thrilled to be given a national platform for the progressive ideals I believed America so desperately needed. Four years later, I resigned from the network I helped build – my faith shattered in an establishment that had drifted disturbingly off-course from the fearless, integrity-driven reporting we once prided ourselves on.
Of course no journalistic institutions are above fair critique. But progressive media anchors like TYT that openly position ourselves as the antidote to blind partisanship and corporate disinformation have a particular duty. We proudly wear the mantle of truth-tellers fighting to advance social justice that mainstream networks ignore. A higher standard applies when you actively market your network as untouchably ethical – yet fall woefully short yourself.
Despite sweeping slogans about “news for people, funded by people,” TYT is keenly obsessed with financial growth, YouTube clicks, podcast downloads and balancing fiery rhetoric to avoid alienating centrist audiences. Perhaps success got the best of them, but money and optics now clearly take priority over progressive ideals when push comes to shove.
Nowhere has this been clearer than TYT’s tragic mishandling of transgender issues – a community already facing unprecedented attacks from the political right. Once outspoken TYT voices for society’s most vulnerable, a dark shift emerged from certain hosts using our platform to broadcast dangerous anti-trans propaganda dressed up as “legitimate questions” . As pleas from staffers and viewers to cease amplifying literal misinformation were brushed aside, ethical lines plunged into free fall.
Abandoning Trans Communities When Needed Most
In 2021, an estimated 44 transgender or gender-expansive youth died by suicide in the United States alone – part of 4,300 total trans deaths worldwide from murder or suicide. Against this harrowing backdrop, TYT joined the dangerous chorus of voices falsely equating lifesaving medical care with “genital mutilation,” labeling doctors as predators, denying trans humanity altogether – or portraying equal rights gains as somehow threatening society.
These were never “different opinions” worthy of debate – but factually bankrupt myths wielded to deliberately roll back hard-won progress at any cost. Leading medical authorities unanimously declared such transphobic disinformation as peddled by TYT hosts to be empirically inaccurate, deeply psychologically damaging, and the very attitudes directly contributing to epidemic violence against an extraordinarily vulnerable population.
Yet despite claiming to champion society’s underdogs, knowledgeable external criticism and desperate internal appeals failed for years to stem TYT’s promotion of dangerous anti-trans hatred – nearly always when politically convenient in attacking disfavored public figures. As the saying goes: you know one’s true values based on who they are willing to sacrifice them for.
But this was no mere abstract political football for me – it was my community, my medical care, my fundamental right to exist free from persecution about which they so casually speculated, based on long-disproven myths. The flippant othering broke my heart coming from an organization claiming to have courageously stood as one of America’s earliest LGBTQ allies.
In the end, being used as their in-house “good one” no longer excused my active complicity. When producers still introduce you as their resident trans correspondent after their biggest host just gave credence to life-threatening lies about your medical care and very existence – the only ethical choice is walking away.
Spreading Misinformation Has Deadly Consequences
Make no mistake about the human cost here. Trans people experience suicide attempt rates of a staggering 40% – with 78% strongly citing sociopolitical causes like discrimination and denial of healthcare. We die by suicide at nearly 9-times the national average.
When respected media anchors like TYT interview notorious anti-trans conversion therapists, amplify grotesque false statistics about trans health outcomes from long-ago debunked studies, refer to gender-affirming medical care as “disfiguring surgeries”, compare our identities to racist police offenders “identifying” as animals – these willful attacks cannot be brushed aside as abstract differences in perspective.
Such scientifically bankrupt misinformation has one rhetorical purpose – manufacturing public consent through false moral panic to systematically strip persecuted groups of civil liberties and human rights protections.
And injecting arbitrary skepticism about settled medical treatment backed unanimously by every major U.S. and world medical authority is beyond intellectually dishonest – it deliberately endangers lives. When hosts cite outlier studies from decades-old religious propaganda groups as equally credible counterpoints to overwhelming modern medical consensus, they become willing amplifiers of violence targeting society’s most vulnerable.
From Florida’s monstrous attacks on trans youth healthcare access to the 300% spike in anti-trans bills introduced in state legislatures since 2020, the human toll of these cynical reactionary politics is very real. And my former colleagues at TYT have sadly positioned themselves central to this dangerous movement – offering legitimacy and platform to the very extremists working most ardently to institutionalize trans oppression.
Struggling Against Internalized Transphobia
Sadly, toxic attitudes inside TYT HQ also created an environment where implicit biases against transgender colleagues festered openly.
Ask any psychologist – unexamined subconscious fears and resentment about those unlike us thrive when otherwise considerate people lack meaningful contact with marginalized communities. Casual ignorance breeds problematic assumptions. Private unease gives rise to public hostility once catalyzed by those standing to exploit divisions. Opportunistic leaders indulge audiences’ darker tendencies for ratings and power.
Looking back at late-night editorial meetings, tense political strategy debates and internal message board disputes, years of inadvertent marginalization signaled trouble on the horizon. Repeated objections from trans producers like myself about questionable bookings were ignored. Bad-faith attacks on the transgender community – especially transgender women – elicited noticeable discomfort from older male hosts struggling to reconcile political homophobia with mailroom friendships.
Unconsciously, perhaps, empathy only extended so far as those castration metaphors, adenoidal slurs and smirking threats encroached closer upon familiar co-workers. But rhetorical traps posing progressives’ concern for minority rights against “working-class values” forced many to pick teams – we suddenly became the “radical outsiders” upending their orderly worldview.
As an early out transgender producer weathering awkward encounters and thoughtless misgendering behind praise for my professionalism, I cannot pretend personal struggle for basic dignity didn’t inform alarm about my employer attacking people like me. But resigning myself was also the only principled protest left – sacrificed for inching TYT’s window of acceptable discourse further towards irrational fears deliberately stoked by our shared political opponents.
Hypocrisy Has Consequences: Public Backlash and Financial Reckoning
RYT’s disastrous handling of gender politics – particularly transgender healthcare – also fueled fierce public blowback from once-loyal progressive supporters. But as editorial standards slipped, the network grew increasingly hostile against viewers questioning sudden shifts parroting right-wing narratives.
Legitimate critiques were reflexively dismissed as “cancel culture” overreach – the convenient catch-all shielding TYT hosts from ever having to actually confront consequences for their rhetoric. Calls for advertisers to stop sponsoring transphobic content were framed as attacks on free speech rather than completely normal accountability tactics TYT pioneered against mainstream networks just years earlier.
Viewers began compiling accountability clips, launching crowdfunded advocacy campaigns and circulating open letters urging reform – only to face pugilistic legal threats for reposting publicly-available content. Most disturbingly, fans sharing heartfelt appeals expressing pain over bigoted messaging were publicly shamed or even doxxed by hosts weaponizing immense platforms against loyal longtime fans.
Financially, regular coverage discrediting transgender health realities also triggered noticeable subscriber churn plus mobilized social media advocacy cratering TYT’s reputation among once core demographics like educated urban liberals most likely to financially support independent progressive media.
According to nonpartisan web analytics tools like SocialBlade, average monthly views on the TYT Network main channel shrank over 20 million in 2022 – losing almost 1/3rd its audience after years languishing around 60 million views per month. Patreon membership hemorrhaging half its subscribers materially impacted TYT’s subscriber-funded business model. And comment sections under TYT videos shifted heavily towards critiques about bigoted coverage.
While hosts angrily blame audience loss on “woke extremists,” data clearly shows viewership declines concentrated around anti-transgender segments – unsurprising given TYT’s largely younger, college-educated, gender diverse base most appalled by suddenly militating against marginalized communities. The growing culture war grift alienating longtime supporters is an unforced error of hubris and hypocrisy. Hosts forget credibility built over 16 years can quickly vanish when fans conclude “principled thought leaders” unjustly abandoned them.
Exposing the Hidden Costs of Complicity
After over four anguished years witnessing TYT devolve into an unrecognizable shadow trading ethical principles for culture war clicks, I finally faced an impossible choice: keep collecting checks helping furnish the platform now holding back my community’s progress – or rescue whatever integrity remained, though forced again into an unsteady career reinvention.
Having built my journalistic prowess as a pioneering transgender reporter at TYT since 2016, walking away meant sacrificing years building audience rapport, on-camera skills and a hard-earned personal brand underwritten by their promotional machine. I faced losing ready access to booking major political players made possible by their industry footprint. And having relocated cross-country to work out of Los Angeles headquarters, resigning over principles jeopardized financial stability and vibrant friendships forged with remarkable colleagues over countless travel adventures across the country.
But I could no longer ignore the psychological trauma of devoting creative talents to an increasingly toxic workplace exacerbating real dangers faced by transgender youth, activists on the ground and medical clinicians serving vulnerable communities. When your employer’s bad-faith attacks on powerless people leave audience comments filled with threats while lawmakers cite their videos introducing legislation outlawing your healthcare, no job is worth that moral injury.
I gave a decade of my life to building TYT’s mission. But losing my income, stability and community remains a small price paying for conscience – because lives like ours depend upon outspoken allies bravely correcting dangerous missteps instead of cravenly rationalizing oppression from our own side. Walking away sends the critical message: some principles ring far more valuable than individual sacrifice. What does it profit progressive media to gain the entire mainstream audience while abandoning millions still counting on our advocacy?
Looking inward also forced accountability for my own complicity. I privately urged journalistic responsibility for years before finding strength to publicly condemn beloved colleagues. Out of misplaced loyalty, I stood silently alongside as our platform bolstered the very forces working to reverse my community’s desperate fight for healthcare, housing, employment and basic dignity. No more.
I cannot change hardened hearts privately entrenched on undermining equal rights for short-term personal convenience or political points. But I can control where my integrity directs this next chapter – using hard-won visibility to uplift vulnerable voices history risks leaving behind.
My pledge moving forward is offering courageous honesty even when inconvenient – acknowledging troubling missteps to course correct together. Following my conscience presents steep costs but liberates creative freedom to build compassion-centered media as I envision. I step into this new horizon heartbroken yet resolved – speaking difficult truths out of love because lives depend on redeeming justice.
Reclaiming My Principles: A Journalist‘s Road Ahead
Of course cutting professional ties with my only career home these many years leaves no shortage of bitter pain, sobering uncertainty and financial anxiety in its wake. Hasty professional reinvention is never easy – reestablishing audience goodwill after guilt by association while seeking financial patrons willing to fund transgressive truth-telling is a decidedly uphill climb.
Ideological media bubbles thrive because telling hard truths proves less personally profitable than satisfying biases. Yet while social penalties scare many into silence, dissenting voices leverage uneasy detours into renewed purpose once centered by inner moral compass rather than external validation. Authenticity disciplines vision.
My humble new venture thus embraces profound journalistic potential only visible having glimpsed unflinching humanity from outside narrow cults of personality. I step forward clear-eyed, buoyed by outpouring solidarity from everyday people moved by costly stands against the tide. Encouragement focusing possible self-sacrifice into shared hope sustains when all else fades.
In this spirit, I pledge rededicating my platform and skills to uplifting calls for justice by any means necessary – welcoming diverse insights from long underserved. Through subscriber-supported streaming, I can conduct interviews, share commentary and foster dialogue without demanding vulnerable people conform to arbitrary gatekeepers for access.
I aim spotlighting voices typically excluded, ignored or pushed to society’s margins by media more responsive to corporate underwriting than moral conscience. I believe complex challenges resolving injustice reveal simplest solutions if we quiet reactionary impulses to listen compassionately. Revolutionary seeds grow remaking systems that serve all.
Of course the road ahead holds great uncertainty. I step forward only with steadfast faith that each small act of courage answering conscience clears terrain for progress. Just as removing one brick sometimes destabilizes entire ideological structures built on fear, each uncomfortable truth seeds collective awakening. My solemn pledge is lending humble strength so others may gain footing to lead in turn.
Onward ever guided not by transitory validation but eternal north star ever-beckoning from within. True privilege is living for purpose greater than oneself.