NPR, Seems Unreasonable

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"Last week, NPR reached out to interview me about our recent HHS study on the link between Left-Wing Authoritarianism, support for clinical statements related to gender-affirmation, and support for political violence.

Normally, I would have gladly accepted. But in light of a recent interview I did for The Guardian on the study, in which reporter Melody Schreiber subsequently fabricated a fake “gotcha” moment, and which I exposed by posting the actual transcript, I decided to request that their questions and my responses be submitted in writing.

I also requested that my responses to questions be quoted in full, and if they wanted to cut them up or paraphrase my responses, then they would need my approval. The NPR website states that “For purposes of accuracy and fairness, there are times when we may want to review portions of a script with a source or read back a quotation to ensure we capture it correctly.”

My request was that, given the volatile nature of the topic, they simply extend this courtesy to me. This is especially important because my coauthors and I are forced to deal with the consequences of extreme distortions of our work. We’ve already seen ridiculous headlines saying our study claims trans people and their supporters are violent, and possibly even terrorists, and that we’re setting the stage for a “trans genocide.”

Support for political violence is rising across the political spectrum, and such extreme distortions of our work therefore put me and my coauthors at significant risk. I think my request was very reasonable. If any story requires checking in with sources to ensure “accuracy and fairness,” it’s this one.

Unfortunately, through no fault of the reporter, who ran my request by NPR’s standards department twice, my request was ultimately denied. My detailed responses will therefore not be included in the story NPR is going to run about our HHS study.

I can’t know for sure what type of article NPR is going to publish about our HHS report, but given NPR’s political skew, I predict it will not be friendly. I hope I’m wrong!

Given that likelihood, I believe it would be prudent of me to preemptively post the full, detailed answers I gave to the questions NPR sent me.

You can read those in the screenshots below."