On Friday, despite a long pattern of airing vicious anti-LGBTQ content, Fox News ran a segment called “Raising Ryland: So Cal transgender teen’s journey” depicting a teenage trans boy and his accepting family. Some viewers were stunned, angrily demanding apologies on Twitter. Other right-wing media figures and anti-trans activists continued to amplify the segment days after it aired, calling it “maddening,” “insane,” and “evil.”
“Fourteen-year-old Ryland Whittington is a typical Southern California teenager,” the America's Newsroom segment began, before revealing that Ryland is a transgender boy who has been happily living in his identity for years. The report highlighted the support of Ryland’s parents, with the teenager’s mother revealing that her faith contributed to her decision to accept her son, and saying, “Children actually do recognize their gender identity very young. … You believe in God, and He created us the way He wanted us, well then, yes, He created Ryland just the way he is.”
The segment also highlighted numbers on suicide and self-harm from The Trevor Project, noting that 60% of transgender youth turn to self-harm, a number that can be reduced through the support of family and friends. Ryland’s mother, Hillary Whittington, stated in the report that she would “rather have a living son than a dead daughter.”
Some Fox News viewers on Twitter were infuriated by the sight of a happy trans teenager. Twitter user “RokerGlasses” wrote, “The latest woke org to promote changing the sex of a minor kid because the kid says he’s trans? FOX NEWS.” Other viewers chimed in to say that Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer (the anchors of America's Newsroom) “better be asking for forgiveness.”
Other right-wing media figures were equally upset that the network covered Ryland and his supportive family. Podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey called it “maddening & heartbreaking.” Anti-trans gadfly Terry Schilling, who previously said that the assault on the family “started in the ‘50s and ‘60s when we started to get women out of the home,” called it “insane.” Substack writer Erick Erickson predicted that the four-minute segment was “gonna hurt the network more than calling Arizona for Biden.” The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who promoted his latest documentary with a trailer featuring a shirtless image of a 15-year-old trans boy, said, “We have to call this evil lunacy out wherever we see it.” Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro called it “the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in quite a while.”
Fox News’ coverage of the transgender community has typically had a more critical bent. During one three-week stretch earlier this year, Fox News aired 170 segments about trans people, much of which featured fearmongering and misinformation. Pride Month so far has not been an exception to this slant: On the first day of Pride, Fox News hosted California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger, who ridiculed a plan to end homelessness in the trans community in San Francisco. (Shellenberger finished fourth in the primary, receiving just 3% of the vote and failing to qualify for the runoff.) The same day, Fox News host Laura Ingraham compared children changing their gender identity to “sexual exploration … in very young children” and the network aired six other segments attacking college swimmer Lia Thomas, misgendering her and accusing her of “malignant narcissism.”
Hopefully the segment about Ryland reached more of Fox News’ audience, since, as Fox News reporter Bryan Llenas noted, “people are afraid of what they do not understand.”
