Is it hyperbolic when critics of The New York Times say its publisher and top editors are intent on eradicating trans people? Dozens of documented instances of bias have dogged its coverage for years, but a flurry of new and newly discovered examples reflect the outlet’s sustained determination to pursue an activist anti-trans agenda.

A review by Assigned Media of four years of news and opinion pieces, placing particular emphasis on recent revelations, shows that the Times has misrepresented the positions of medical organizations, deceived readers with misleading assertions, averted its eyes to the right-wing money powering the anti-trans movement and zealously defended a prominent bigot, JK Rowling. Its newsroom still does not hire or assign trans journalists to cover trans issues — a de facto ban that exemplifies prejudice — and it suppresses the expression of dissenting queer viewpoints internally.

As a veteran former editor on The Times’s International Desk, I’ve witnessed this campaign up close.

Though the Times produces a vast number of words about transgender people — far and away more stories than any other major news outlet so far this year, according to our tracker — it’s been three years since it has published any in-depth examination of the hard-right groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation that have driven the anti-trans movement. Newsrooms with far fewer resources, such as Mother Jones, have undertaken such efforts, revealing the way anti-trans politics underpins the right wing’s broader anti-feminist agenda, something that affects the vast majority of Americans.

Corporate spokespeople routinely defend the Times’s coverage as fair and even empathetic, but editors for both its news and opinion pages have continued to make choices that legitimize and elevate right-wing positions intended to drive trans people out of public life, denying us access to health care, public facilities, the right to freedom of movement and association and the documentation needed to vote and conduct basic societal functions.

Outright misrepresentations are characteristic of the paper’s coverage. Late last month, both the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association suggested that the Times had mischaracterized their positions in its news and opinion pages in ways that falsely implied a softening of their longtime support for gender affirming care.