Media Matters identified just 5 national TV news mentions in 2024 of fatal anti-trans violence. Those 5 mentions totaled just 3 minutes of airtime.

MSNBC aired 4 of these mentions while CNN included just 1. ABC, CBS, and NBC each failed to air any coverage, according to our review. Fox News also failed to include any coverage of the topic — a departure from 2023, when segments on the network often included mocking or dismissive commentary about victims of anti-trans violence.

Of the 5 mentions, 3 referenced systemic or political drivers of anti-trans violence (all 3 aired on MSNBC). Only 1 mention, on CNN, made reference to a specific but unnamed victim, and no mentions included the actual names of specific victims.

Notably, 3 of the 5 mentions occurred in segments that featured trans or gender-nonconforming guests (all on MSNBC).

While 5 cable news segments featured mentions of fatal anti-trans violence, none treated it as the primary subject. In nearly every case, the topic was mentioned only briefly — folded into conversations about entirely different political or cultural developments. These fleeting mentions underscore the reality that systemic violence against trans people is often treated as a footnote rather than a focus.

• The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle (February 22): Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr briefly drew a connection between anti-trans rhetoric and fatal violence — one of the few moments in 2024 when the link was made on national television.
  
   
• Velshi (April 7): The segment centered on “cancel culture” and its perceived impact on free speech. As part of a critique of media narratives, journalist Meredith Clark noted that Black trans women are disproportionately targeted for violence — a passing mention that contextualized anti-trans violence but did not delve into specific incidents.
  
   
• State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash (July 14): The episode focused on the attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. During an interview, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) briefly referenced attending a vigil for a murdered trans teen — a somber aside within a conversation dominated by discussion of election security and political violence more broadly. 
  
   
• Ayman (September 8): During a discussion about Trump and the right-wing policy blueprint Project 2025, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Chase Strangio highlighted the real-world consequences of anti-trans rhetoric. 
  
   
• The Reid Out (November 1): In a segment critiquing the Trump campaign’s claims that its policies would protect women, guest Janelle Monáe called out political rhetoric that enables violence against trans people. The discussion did not reference specific acts of fatal violence or victims.

Anti-trans violence was not the primary focus in any of the 5 segments, however, and appeared in each as only a mention, which we defined as an instance in which a speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned fatal violence against trans people without another speaker engaging with the comment. This pattern reflects the broader failure of national TV news to treat these deaths as urgent stories in their own right.

In 2024, the ACLU tracked 533 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced across the country. The Trump campaign and its allies spent nearly $215 million on ads attacking Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for her perceived support of trans equality. Yet national news coverage last year largely failed to contextualize deadly anti-trans violence within the legislative onslaught. Instead, the overwhelming majority of victims received no attention at all.

Despite the historic scale of anti-LGBTQ legislation and escalating rhetoric targeting trans communities, coverage of fatal anti-trans violence dropped to record lows in 2024. The limited number of segments that did reference the issue were notable for including trans and gender-nonconforming voices — a bright spot underscoring the importance of representation. 

Last year’s coverage gap is particularly striking given the attention paid to the death of Oklahoma transgender teenager Nex Benedict. Benedict’s death the day after a violent altercation in the bathroom of their high school was ruled a suicide and is thus excluded from our dataset, but the incident received 85 minutes of national coverage from broadcast news (including PBS) and major cable networks — nearly 30 times the combined amount given to all instances of fatal anti-trans violence across corporate broadcast and cable news networks in 2024. 

Overall, national news continues to fail trans communities. If media outlets are serious about covering political violence, they must stop waiting for viral moments to recognize its impact.

As anti-LGBTQ extremism escalates, the stakes are clear: National media must respond with consistency, or else risk being complicit in a culture of silence.

Media Matters searched transcripts in the Kinetiq video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC and all original episodes of ABC’s GMA Early, Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ News Mornings, Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Early Today, Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press for any variations of any of the terms “transgender,” “trans,” “gender identity,” “nonbinary,” “gender queer,” or “gender nonconforming” within 50 words of any variations of any of the terms “murder,” “kill,” “shot,” “stab,” “dead,” “death,” “die,” “beat,” or “homicide” from January 1, 2024, through December 31, 2024. 

We also searched for the names of the transgender and gender non-conforming people who were killed in 2024: Kitty Monroe, Righteous TK “Chevy” Hill, Diamond Brigman, Alex Taylor Franco, Meraxes Medina, África “Emma” Parrilla Garcia, “Yella” (Robert) Clark Jr., Tee “Lagend Billions” Arnold, River Nevaeh “Phoenixx” Goddard, Andrea Doria Dos Passos, Sasha Williams, Starr Brown, Kita Bee, Reyna Hernandez, Tayy Dior Thomas, Michelle Henry, Jazlynn Johnson, Liara Tsai, M. Tapia, Pauly Likens, Shannon Boswell, Kenji Spurgeon, Monique Brooks, Tai'Vion Latham, Dylan Gurley, Vanity Williams, Redd “Barbie”, Kassim Omar, Honee Daniels, Santonio ”San" Coleman, Quanesha “Cocoa'' Shantel, Morgan Salomone, Cameron Jamal Miikquise Thompson, and Ra’Lasia Wright.

Finally, we searched transcripts in the Nexis database for all of the above terms and names; however, this double-check was limited to transcripts for news shows airing between 5 p.m. and midnight on Fox News, all transcripts for CNN, and all transcripts for news programming on ABC and CBS.

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when the murder of a specific trans person in the United States or fatal violence against trans people in 2024 in the United States was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the fatal violence against trans people. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed fatal violence against trans people with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned fatal violence against trans people without another speaker engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about fatal violence against trans people scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.

We then reviewed all identified segments for whether they included mentions of specific acts of violence against trans people, the name of a trans person who was the victim of violence, a trans guest, or context connecting the instance of anti-trans violence to the larger national trend of increasing violence directed at trans people.