The Protocol - Podcast Rankings and reviews

i thought this podcast was a well executed look into the history of gender affirming care for kids. A hot topic in today’s world. as a supporter of gender affirming care, it was interesting to learn more about our system in the US. I do believe any medical intervention into a child’s body should be looked at with scrutiny, and i think anyone who supports this care should welcome that.

I found this to be a stellar piece of investigative journalism. It was thoughtfully done and did a great job of laying out the facts so the listener could reach their own conclusion.

Not entirely sure why there are reviews saying trans people were not interviewed for this series. There were several trans individuals interviewed? Just leads me to believe those reviewers did not actually listen to the podcast.

Glad to see the NYT is putting out quality content again!

The people saying no trans people were interviews obviously didn’t listen and must have been sent to leave negative reviews from some social media page somewhere. They DO interview trans people. But the story is about gender affirming care so of course most of the interviews are with the people who DO the care and CREATED the care. That’s the point of the story. And it’s fantastic. I learned so much about the entire history and how the US system changed the Dutch protocol and how that had contributed to the backlash we see now. It’s a shame. And it echoes the rushed, medicine heavy system of health care you see across the board in the US and the utter lack of priority around mental health. Our lack of a centralized health care system and our reliance on insurance are a big part of this problem too. This is a fantastic podcast!

I’m about to write a piece about gender affirming care under Trump and listened to the series as part of my research. I found myself changing my personal views throughout the episodes, which I consider a good thing. A good piece of journalism makes the reader/listener think. This is especially true of this subject.
Kudos to the editing team, too.

The New York Times claims to make a podcast about how healthcare for trans kids got “pulled into a political fight” and then gives us six episodes that say virtually nothing about the concerted right-wing propaganda effort (and literally nothing about how the NYT’s own stories were used in said campaign), and whose overarching argument (carefully sculpted so as to be put in the voice of cherry picked sources, not the “objective” reporter) is that, actually, the problem is this good, thorough “Dutch protocol” was misapplied in the United States (we’ve “gone too far”!) and that the backlash was simply the result of that. Along the way there are outright errors and bizarre treatment of evidence that it’s impossible to imagine the NYT making on almost any other subject. I thought the podcast people and just the need to foreground people’s voices could let the NYT redeem itself on this issue but it’s very much the opposite. One small kudos, though: the producer(s) who put together the montage of voices in the last episode. That was beautiful and moving and this is the kind of work that can actually matter. More of this, please

I was holding out some amount of hope that this would be a more fair take on trans healthcare than previous Times reporting, given how they framed their calls to hear from trans people, but no. Even while they acknowledge that trans people are under attack by the government as a scapegoat for social conservative anxiety, the Times doubles down once again on misrepresenting trans healthcare to fear monger and direct more hate towards trans people. While Republicans attack basic healthcare for not just trans youth, but even adults - because they just don’t want trans people to exist for all - the Times here creates more cover by making trans healthcare sound insidious. This was really the last straw for my holding any regard for the Times’ journalistic capability.