The Stealth Edit

On Tuesday, I relived my previous role as a fact-checker for the USA Today opinion section, despite working now for National Review. USA Today ran an article correcting “egregious misinformation” about “gender-affirming care.” The writer claimed that administering “puberty-blocking medicines” is “an intervention that is fully reversible.” I wrote a Corner post showing that the linked source did not support the claim; the source stated “[researchers] noted that because the study was conducted in rats, additional research would be needed to confirm the findings in humans.” This comment isn’t obscured in a tiny, easily missed footnote. Rather, it is in the second paragraph on the website. 

The particularly damning fact for USA Today is that the study in question — a Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the University of Northern Colorado — resists endorsing puberty-blocking drugs for humans. The experiment found that, weeks after stopping the hormone agonists, the female rats’ reproductive organs showed normal (albeit delayed) development. But there were consequences on their fertility: They had significantly smaller litters, and one rat that received puberty blockers did not achieve pregnancy. Other side effects were noted. The rats who received puberty blockers showed reduced voluntary running on a wheel and increased body mass. A portion of the study’s conclusion is as follows: 

“The recovery of reproductive morphology and function after GnRHa withdrawal in the majority of young female rats indicate there is a low risk to future fertility. The effect of puberty blocking treatment on reducing physical activity and increasing body mass is a greater concern. These studies need to be translated to humans to further understand the influence of GnRHa treatment on transgender health.”

After the National Review Corner post was published, USA Today changed the paragraph in its opinion article, which now reads as follows (with my emphasis added to indicate the difference): “For adolescents approaching the onset of puberty, puberty-blocking medicines may be appropriate for delaying the development of secondary sex characteristics not matching their gender identity, an intervention that could be reversible.” The same website remains as the hyperlinked source. 

The problem is that USA Today’s supposed correction doesn’t make the sentence correct. The relevant studies of high quality overwhelmingly show that puberty-blockers have severe, permanent side effects and offer little to no benefits. The Cass Report, an independent review commissioned by England’s NHS on gender-related medical treatments for minors, stated that a systematic review undertaken by the University of York found that puberty-blocking drugs do suppress puberty, but also compromise bone density and result in “no changes in gender dysphoria or body satisfaction.” Lupron, a puberty blocker that is also prescribed to pedophiles for curbing desire, warns on its label that it should not be taken for more than twelve months “due to concerns of bone thinning” that “may not be completely reversible after stopping treatment.” By 2017, more than 10,000 adverse-event reports about Lupron had been filed to the FDA by women who had taken it as children; their conditions included osteoporosis, degenerative disc disease, cracked teeth, seizures, and much worse.

Perhaps the greater concern is how USA Today updated the article, not what the article was updated to say. The newspaper changed a factual assertion hours after initial publication, yet there isn’t an editor’s note disclosing that such change was made. Revising a factual claim without a disclaimer seems incompatible with the publication’s “Principles of Ethical Conduct,” which state “we will take responsibility for our decisions and consider the possible consequences of our actions” and “we will explain to audiences our journalistic processes to promote transparency and engagement.” It proves challenging to argue that secret revisions demonstrate “transparency” in “journalistic processes.”

The great irony is that the stealthy edit occurred in an article that sought to correct “egregious misinformation.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines “misinformation” as “the action of misinforming someone; the condition of being misinformed” and “wrong or misleading information.” A USA Today news article from 2023 states that “misinformation — and its ugly friend disinformation — can radicalize those that consume it, or trick them into believing harmful mistruths about anything from medicine to politics.” Surely, USA Today‘s baseless claim about puberty blockers constitutes “misinformation,” since it is a “harmful mistruth” about “medicine” that can “trick” a reader into supporting or pursuing medicalized gender transition.

Of course, writers and editors make mistakes. Accidents happen, especially on a busy news day when publications rush to cover an important story. But this recent episode with USA Today is among many examples revealing that the mainstream media is deliberately lying to you. Left-wing publications present myths as facts, throw the article into the memory hole, pretend an earlier record never existed, and still manage to get the facts wrong in the updated version, all while accusing right-wing critics of promoting “misinformation.” Ultimately, we can read the mainstream media, or we can seek truth.