Does the Associated Press expect journalists to lie? The new AP style guide on trans issues elevates gender ideology over the truth.

Reptiles, muckrakers or simply unscrupulous bastards – journalists are a reviled breed, trusted by the public about as much as politicians and estate agents. And yet, speak off the record to your average hack and you will discover that most of us care about our work, which is notoriously high stress and low pay. We tend to think of ourselves as motivated by lofty dreams – a desire to put facts in the public domain and to hold the powerful to account. But the new guidance on transgender issues from the Associated Press Stylebook fits a rainbow gag to the mouths of many in the profession – advising writers to respect preferred pronouns and to override facts about sex in favour of feelings about gender identity.

The ramifications of this shouldn’t be underestimated. For decades, the AP Stylebook has served as a go-to style manual for vast numbers of US news organisations. Ironically, the new ‘Topical Guide’ on transgenderism advises the use of ‘unbiased language’ and to ‘avoid false balance [by] giving a platform to unqualified claims or sources in the guise of balancing a story by including all views’. And yet, the stylebook is itself saturated in unbalanced, unscientific trans ideology.

For example, the AP guidance claims: ‘A person’s sex and gender are usually assigned at birth by parents or attendants and can turn out to be inaccurate.’ This kind of claim might be best referred to as ‘trans truth’ – ie, a lie.

Humans come in two sexes. Within the male and female categories, a tiny subsection has disorders or variations of sexual development. This biological fact can be seen across a billion years of evolution. Furthermore, external genitalia can be recognised in utero – meaning that sex can be accurately observed before birth. Sex is not randomly assigned by some Harry Potteresque sorting hat, nor is it a spectrum. It is just a biological reality.

The guide also condemns ‘deadnaming’, or referring to the previous name of someone who identifies as trans, because that ‘can be akin to using a slur and can cause feelings of gender dysphoria to resurface’. But it is not the job of journalists to spare the feelings of those who identify as trans, particularly when doing so obscures the truth. This is of vital importance when it comes to the reporting of crime.