Mr. David Yarnold,
I was asked to say a few words about why the transgender community is boycotting the Mercury News. It is simple to state. We are arguing for accurate reporting. Too many times we have carefully chosen our words only to read a misquoted version the next day. When we investigate the reason for the rewrite we are told the editors rewrote it. We are embarrassed to have our name associated with these inaccuracies. We chose to boycott the Mercury rather than give validity to your articles. Hence the Mercury News has had little success in gaining access to the transgender community in the bay area. The Mercury has the same type of coverage and interviews the same people as the non-local media.
To improve the accuracy of the Mercury News reporting we need to educate the editors on the vocabulary and culture of the transgender community. We feel that once the editors better understand our culture they can make informed editing decision in articles about tragedies such as Gwen Araujo's murder. It is really not as confusing as you might think. Once you know the proper vocabulary it becomes easy to write about people like Gwen. The Mercury News often has misled the readers about Gwen’s gender and sexual orientation. When you were unsure of how to talk about Gwen you tried to please the family. We have a better way. An objective way. We have been talking about people like Gwen for a long time. Gwen was a transgendered youth. This much is clear to the entire GLBT community. All that word implies is that Gwen is gender different. If you looked for a different word, a word in more common usage, you won’t find it. It came into use to describe the very person Gwen represents. The other words, words from your culture, caused the inaccuracies in your articles.
Many of your articles make assumptions based on your cultural background. When you write about a man dressed as a woman, who fooled the men into thinking he was female, you expose those cultural assumptions and outrage a community you don’t understand.
Three years ago GenderPac worked with the Associated Press to produce guidelines that were accurate yet didn’t offend the people they described. Please refer to the 2002 AP guideline for more information.
All the news media coverage has suffered because this problem but the San Jose Mercury News is our newspaper. It is the newspaper that our coworkers and friends read. It is the newspaper our family reads. It is a newspaper that servers one of the nation’s largest GLBT populations. They know us, and they see how the Mercury News portrays transgendered people. The poor and insensitive reporting has shocked them. Please let us help you make the Mercury News a better newspaper.
Thank you,
Shelly Prevost