Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition

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Comment by Gunner on July 11, 2008 at 5:10pm

GLAAD and Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) Call on Boston Herald to Apologize for Offensive Coverage of Transgender People

July 11, 2008 – The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) are encouraging people to contact the Boston Herald and ask editors to apologize for the paper's offensive slurs and sensationalistic coverage of transgender people.

On July 7, the paper posted an article online about a police operation headlined "Undercover 'john' takes on trannies, pimps" and focused on a Boston-area detective who goes undercover to arrest sex workers. The article repeatedly referred to transgender women as "trannies" and opened the story by describing how the detective has been "trapped inside houses of ill repute by giant naked trannies." The article was also published in the July 8 print edition.

Read the article here: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1105340

This article repeatedly uses anti-transgender slurs and fails to treat its subjects with basic human decency. These sorts of slurs should be unacceptable in any credible news outlet to publish as quoted matter, much less in a staff writer's article.

GLAAD and MTPC separately contacted the Boston Herald reporter, Jessica Van Sack, to ask her to remove the defamatory terminology and descriptions from the article and to offer suggestions and recommendations on how to cover transgender people fairly. The reporter did not respond to calls or emails. GLAAD and MTPC are encouraging people to contact the paper and let them know that this cheap, tabloid sensationalism is unacceptable.

Please contact the Boston Herald and call on them to issue an apology. Tell them that they are failing to meet basic standards of journalistic integrity and that they must remove the defamatory terminology and references from the article.

Boston Herald Contacts:
Jessica Van Sack
City Reporter
jvansack@bostonherald.com
(617) 619-6437

Joe Dwinell
City Executive Co-Editor
jdwinell@bostonherald.com
(617) 619-6177

Kevin Convey
Editor in Chief
kconvey@bostonherald.com
(617) 619-6403

GLAAD & MTPC Contacts:
Paul Karr, Director of Media Field Strategy, GLAAD
(646) 871-8022, karr@glaad.org

Gunner Scott, Director, MTPC
(617) 778-0519, gscott@masstpc.org