News links

Trans news sources | Trans history | Newspapers | Television & radio | Watchdogs | Other

Trans news sources

If you’re looking for news on issues affecting trans people, why not start with the news services run by trans people themselves?

• UKPFC-News is Press For Change’s own regular newsfeed … bringing readers a regular series of news updates from the UK and around the world, as well as campaign briefings, announcements, and calls for action. UKPFC-NEWS is distributed as a mailing list to which you can easily subscribe … or if you prefer, you can read it the archives.
• Gender Advocacy Internet News (GAIN) is another trans mailing list, this time from the USA. You’ll find the archives and subscription instructions on GAIN’s website.
• Planet Out is a very large, US-based website serving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. Its news service is thorough, and broad-based.
• IFGE News
  news pages of The International Foundation for Gender Education
• Gender Education and Advocacy
  News pages, mainly USA. GEA is the merger of AEGIS and ITA.
• InYourFace news service
  The news pages of the US-based GenderPAC (Gender Public Advocacy Coalition).
  GenderPAC lists its Board Members as including the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the International Foundation for Gender Education, BiNet USA, FTM International, AEGIS, It’s Time America, the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA), TOPS, and Tri-Ess.
• Queer Resources Directory
  The Queer Resources Directory claims to have “23253 files about everything queer”
• Gaywire
  Unfortunately needs Javascript enabled in order for the main news page to work - and it brings up a very irritating pop-up box. I’m sure it’s wonderful but many of us have limited patience with sites which can’t be bothered to make even the basic effort to be browser-friendly.

Trans history

• Remembering Our Dead
  It’d be wonderful if there was no need for this website … but sadly, some trans people are killed just for being trans. Gwen Smith maintains this site, and it’s not just a valuable historical record — it’s a powerful reminder of the importance of ensuring that police services understand how being trans can make us vulnerable to attack.
• The Rage Page
  US site. “It’s goal is simple. I want to report and chronicle incidents of abuse of transgendered individuals wherever they occur.”

Newspapers

• The Daily Telegraph
  The Daily Telegraph was the first of the major UK newspapers to have a website and its on-line presence is still one of the best — even if it is slightly irritating to have to register. The relatively uncluttered layout has sprouted rather more graphics than would be ideal, but it is still clear and logically presented. It has a very effective search engine, which provides easy access to an archive stretching back to 1995. For UK news, this is one of the best sources, providing comprehensive and well-balanced coverage of issues affecting trans people.
• The Guardian
  The Guardian’s website has a simple and elegant layout, which loads quickly: the other papers could learn a lot from it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an on-line archive, but the site does carry the major news stories each day — so if you’re looking for quickly downloadable coverage of a current story, it’s a good place to look.
• The Independent
  The Independent’s website is rather spoilt by a surfeit of bulky graphics, which produces an elegant effect but makes downloads rather slow — and breaks some browsers — and the site is set up so that it can’t be navigated with graphics off. Still, it does seem to carry all the day’s stories in an easily-accessible manner — though, like the Guardian, it has no archive.
• The Times and Sunday Times
  This website suffers, as do so many others, from excessive use of layout tricks … making for a rather cluttered screen which can be difficult to read and to navigate. As far as I can see, it does carry all the day’s stories, and has an archive of all on-line issues going back to January 1996 … but the archive search facility which used to be provided has sadly disappeared. Registration required for use.
• The Scotsman
  The Scotsman is one of Scotland’s leading daily newspapers, and has a nicely-designed website, with a searchable archive going back to October 1997. Unfortunately, not all the day’s stories make the journey from the print edition to the website, so the archive is not as comprehensive as might be expected by regular readers of the paper.
• The Herald
  Previously the “Glasgow Herald”, this is Scotland top-selling broadsheet newspaper. Politically fairly impartial
• The Irish Times
  The Irish Times website has a clean and uncluttered look, with most (if not all) of the day’s stories and a searchable archive going back to 1996.
• The Mirror
  The Mirror’s website (formerly “The Daily Mirror”) reproduces on-line the spirit of the tabloid presentation of the printed paper, with lots of graphics and picture and strong colors … but it includes a pretty good search selection of the paper’s news stories. We couldn’t find an archive, though.
• The Express

Television & radio

• The BBC
  Naturally contains plenty of coverage of its programming, but as the world’s largest public-service broadcaster, renowned for its new coverage, it also has a very impressive on-line news section. The layout is clear, easily navigable and doesn’t oversuse graphics and, for those with slow modems, they’ve thoughtfully provided a low-graphics version of the site. There’s also a good search engine which produces results quickly … but which, sadly, throws up some instances of rather poor use of language in referring to trans people.
  To contact the BBC, for feedback or information, try the How to contact us page.
• CNN
  CNN has grown in the last two decades from a small start-up on cable television to become one of the world’s biggest news broadcasters.  Its easily-used website, with easily-searchable archives, reflects the scale of its operations, but they don’t seem to give much coverage to trans people.

Watchdogs

• The Press Complaints Commission
• The Advertising Standards Authority
  The ASA is not directly concerned with news … but since most news media are funded at least partially by advertising, news tends to come with adverts attached.  If those adverts don’t portray us fairly, that can have as big a negative impact as misreporting of news.

Other

• Yahoo’s ’News & Media’ index
  Yahoo’s index is one of the most heavily-visted sites on the web, but they don’t always seem able to keep up with the deluge of new websites appearing.  So the ’News & Media’ index is large, and has many useful links … but it’s not exhaustive.