Washington, DC - June 01, 2018: Fox News DC Bureau in Washington, DC
CV NEWS FEED // On March 14, CatholicVote reported that media giant Fox News quietly introduced LGBTQ movement euphemisms in their reporting on “transgender surgeries” for minors.
Daily Signal journalist Mary Margaret Olohan first called attention to Fox’s use of LGBTQ language via Twitter, stating that the media outlet’s uncritical use of terms like “gender-affirming” when describing controversial practices is in accord with the demands of the pro-trans advocacy group GLAAD.
In 2021, Olohan broke the story that LGBTQ organizations actively discourage the use of terms such as “gender transition surgery” or “sex change surgery” in favor of language that deemphasizes the word “surgery” or avoids mentioning it altogether in order to paint a picture that these life-changing and often irreversible procedures are “normal” for children below the age of consent.
>> Fox News Quietly Introduces ‘Trans’ Agenda Euphemisms in Reporting <<
Nearly three weeks after CatholicVote’s initial report, Fox News continues to use GLAAD-approved euphemisms in articles on the subject of “sex-change” surgeries for so-called “transgender youth.”
On Monday, March 27, Fox’s online division covered Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of S.B. 150. The bill, which was passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature, would have both banned subjecting minors to “transgender surgeries” and expanded parental rights in education by preventing classroom discussion of topics of a sexual nature.
Although the Fox article uses “gender transition surgery” in the headline, two uses of “gender-affirming care” are baked into the body of the text – one in the caption of a photo of Beshear and the other in the second-to-last paragraph. The governor is up for re-election this November in a state that voted Republican by 26 points in 2020.
Another recent Fox article, about the Missouri Attorney General, also used the LGBTQ-friendly phrase twice.
Meanwhile, Fox’s story on a proposed Minnesota bill, posted March 25, uses the term “gender-affirming” 11 times. The first eight times the phrase is used, it appears in quotation marks. However, following the pattern of the Kentucky article, the last three mentions of the term (including one as part of a caption) are without quotation marks.
Finally, a short Fox News piece dated March 21, covering a debate in the Nebraska Legislature, uses “gender-affirming” six times without quotation marks. Also similar to their Kentucky coverage, here Fox uses the term “youth sex change” in the headline, but throughout the article, the GLAAD-approved language is consistently used.
