Fox News’ fixation on transgender people has reached such extreme levels that it is now outpacing every other news outlet in the United States — including LGBTQ+ publications themselves.
According to new research by media analyst Jessica Kant, the Murdoch-owned broadcaster published more articles referencing trans people in 2025 than any other news organisation, producing coverage at a scale that dwarfs even major national and queer-focused outlets.
In findings shared on Sunday (8 February), Kant revealed that Fox News alone accounted for more than half of all anti-trans coverage produced by six of the largest conservative news outlets in the U.S.
While the volume of stories fluctuated month to month, Fox News’ output has remained consistently higher than any other outlet since 2023, often publishing more trans-related articles in a year than there are days.
Over the past four years, Fox News has outpaced publications such as The Advocate, NBC News, The Guardian, and The Washington Post — a remarkable statistic given its editorial stance.
Tracking the “Outrage Factory”
The data is part of Kant’s ongoing research into anti-trans media coverage in the U.S. and UK, a project she began after noticing what she described as an “astronomical” increase in stories targeting trans people.
“Every time I think I’ve scratched the surface of what I’ve come to call ‘the outrage factory’, I lose an entire weekend combing through stacks of awfulness that takes a whole bank of monitors to see,” Kant said.
To analyse the coverage, Kant indexed Google News search results using three core keywords:
- biological sex
- gender identity
- transgender
Across Fox News — and most other outlets — ‘transgender’ was by far the most frequently used term, while usage of ‘biological sex’ and ‘gender identity’ varied month to month.
Nearly 1,000 Anti-Trans Articles in a Single Year
According to the dataset, 2025 marked Fox News’ most aggressive year yet, with almost 1,000 articles containing the word ‘transgender’ published by year’s end.
By comparison:
- LGBTQ+ outlet The Advocate published just under 500 such articles in 2025
- The New York Times, which has itself faced criticism for its trans coverage, published just over 500
Kant noted that the figures likely underestimate the true scale of Fox News’ output.
“Using only three keywords gives us a sample — not the full picture,” she explained.
Terms such as ‘gender ideology’, ‘gender confusion’, and ‘transgenderism’ — frequently used by Fox News — were not fully captured, nor was the shorthand term ‘trans’, which is often substituted for ‘transgender’.
Undoing Progress Through Language
Kant warned that this sustained media campaign actively undermines decades of progress in trans rights, particularly by weaponising language.
“A large part of destigmatisation of transgender people hinged on separating ‘sex versus gender’ debates from our basic existence,” she said.
“For a brief moment in time, ‘transgender’ became a proper adjective — not something that required qualifiers, scepticism, or constant reference to assigned sex at birth.”
That progress, she argues, is now being reversed through strategic emphasis on sex and biology in hostile coverage.
A Pattern Confirmed by Media Watchdogs
Kant’s findings align with repeated reports from Media Matters for America, which tracks far-right rhetoric in U.S. media.
The organisation recently found that Fox News’ television programming spent more than four hours praising President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive orders between 20 January and 19 February alone.
Interestingly, Kant also observed a regional difference:
the term ‘biological sex’ appears far more frequently in UK media, likely influenced by “gender-critical” activism and the UK Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010.
Together, the data paints a stark picture of how relentless, industrial-scale media coverage has become a central force shaping — and often distorting — public understanding of transgender lives.
