Jael Holzman, a climate journalist who most recently reported for Axios, announced this week that she is leaving congressional reporting. In an essay on Medium published earlier this week, Holzman, who is transgender, explained her frustrations with media coverage of trans rights and issues. I caught up with Holzman this week to discuss her decision to leave, and what reporters—particularly those who cover Capitol Hill—can do better. This interview has been edited and lightly condensed for clarity. In this essay, you give an example of an issue that was under-covered by reporters on the Hill, which was the inclusion of language to ban government-backed health care insurance from covering sex- and gender-affirming care in the House GOP funding bills. I’d be interested to know more about why you think that was overlooked by reporters. Do you think that they didn’t know about it or that it just was deemed less of a priority? Watching the coverage as another reporter who was covering those bills on a different beat, it was stark seeing the medical care that I need to live get lumped into what reporters often use as shorthand—whether it be like "culture war," "anti-woke." Sometimes I’d see it get lumped into "DEI," which to me is not accurate. I’d see it get lumped into conversations about abortion. It was often lumped into [issues of] health care, LGBTQ acronyms. It was surprising how few reporters asked about this language. When I look back on my conversations with my colleagues in the press, those who I’ve worked next to quite often, the conversations about this language usually went something along the lines of, "Either readers don’t care about it, or it’s just another poison pill." I think often reporters are trained to think on the Hill, like, "Is this going to be law today? Well, no. Then I’m not going to spend my time on it." It’s a heavily reactive kind of journalism today. A sliver of a sliver of the American people is being targeted explicitly, and I think there’s just not a prior frame of reference. People thought it wasn’t going to be law, and so they didn’t cover it. Although I don’t really know if that was the case. No one was asking, "Is this going to become law?" I think in journalism overall, but especially on the Hill, because we interact with lawmakers of both parties on a daily basis, there is a desire to seem "objective" or "neutral." How do you think that affects how reporters talk about or cover trans issues? When I became a climate journalist, I was drawn to that field because it was something so pressing, rooted in science, that had been over decades politicized to the point where one side of a political argument—at least when I started in congressional journalism, and in policy journalism—was spending a lot of time arguing that the science wasn’t sound or that the claims made about man-made climate change were somehow questionable. Over time, we as an industry have come to grips with the fact that that’s the product of a number of actors, a number of campaigns, industry-funded and also politically motivated, to somehow convince at least some percentage of the population that the science can be questioned. And we learned how to cover it that way. I’ve spent a lot of time and continue to spend a lot of time talking to other reporters and editors about what story ideas are out there. I think that’s something that should be happening in more newsrooms on this topic. And what I’ve found is a—reluctance would be putting it mildly to the point of absurdity—an outright refusal, I would say, in some newsrooms, to write about the science behind this medical care the way that doctors and scientists talk about it. And I think that that’s happening because there is a fear of offending readers that don’t like trans people. And I know this firsthand, because I myself have heard that from people in our industry. I’m glad you mentioned that comparison to climate journalism. I thought that was a really interesting comparison that you made in your essay. And I’m curious to know more why you think it’s so difficult to incorporate that into health reporting. I know you say people are afraid of offending those who oppose trans rights. But do you think that this, like climate journalism, just will take time? Or is this something that you’re less optimistic that people will come around to the science of? It’s not even a question of optimism. Mother Jones recently reported … on the shadow campaign against this medical care. This is a dedicated, concentrated, well-thought-out, potentially global campaign to take away this medical care for ideological reasons that do not have any favor for making sure that people who need it survive. I would like to say that I am optimistic that journalists will wake up to these facts. I would like to say that with training and with resources, reporters will cover this in a way that’s authoritative. But they need to overcome that fear, and that hesitation to deal with the existence of trans people as though it is fact. And I think the longer that it pervades, the less likely it is for it to improve. Because this industry’s crumbling. It’s sad to see, as a member of it. At a time when you need to be assigning people to a new story, do newsrooms have the resources to take it on? I think there’s a huge story in this. Some day, some intrepid reporter is going to dive into it and win a Pulitzer Prize—or, like, seven of them—and I think that that day that person will be looked at as though they were a genius, and all they did was look at the pretty easy-to-find facts around them. When I was at Politico, I wrote at least four stories, investigative stories about the anti-trans movement, on top of the work that I did in climate. I did it because I think that there is a need for those of us who are trans in the press corps to use the privilege that we do have to at least improve somewhat—whatever margin it can be—the misinformation out there, and the lack of proper source identification out there, the lack of context. But I left Politico, and I think that says a lot. I left the Hill, and I think that says a lot. I think people need to recognize that if they’re not careful, there won’t be people around to help cover this better because all of us will be gone. Like the Lorax. What’s next for you? Stay tuned. I am staying in climate journalism. I have a really cool thing I’m doing that I can’t talk about right now. But stay tuned, keep eyes peeled. I’ve never been more excited. And on top of journalism, I am literally talking to you inside of my first-ever touring van rental because I’m about to go play a couple weeks of dates with my band, Echo Astral. I’m really excited about that. |
