PBS Barely Lets Republican Speak on ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Kids

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal funding for TV public-affairs programs, insisted on “strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature.” The CPB and PBS have ignored this language ever since.

On Wednesday, the PBS NewsHour aired an 11-minute segment under the headline “Parents concerned as new state laws restrict rights of transgender children.” They summarized it on Twitter: “Republican legislators are advancing bills restricting doctors and other providers from offering transition-related health care for minors.”

Anchor William Brangham began with a medley of permissive parents who lobbied against Republicans who oppose so-called “gender-affirming care” for kids, from puberty blockers to amputation surgeries. Then he conducted an interview with radical transgender activist Erin Reed, which made it nearly unanimous — on a subject that is clearly “of a controversial nature.” Reed fights dirty, comparing GOP opposition to “genocide.”

The conservative or Republican view was aired for 48 seconds, and then Reed was allowed to shoot it down, with no rebuttal.

BRANGHAM: In fact, one of my colleagues, Laura Barron-Lopez, spoke with a legislator in Tennessee. This is Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton. He supports one of these laws, and I want to play a clip of what he has to say. He equates gender reassignment surgery with child abuse, and argues that people who undergo that surgery, 80 percent of them later regret it. Here’s a little bit more of what he had to say.

SEXTON: There’s a difference between a child who is younger than 18 making that decision compared to someone who’s an adult making that decision. And so we’re going to err on the side of saying, if you’re an adult, and that’s what you want to do, go at it. But, as a child, you’re telling me that a 10-, 11- and 12-year-old child absolutely knows what gender that they want to be. I do not believe that. That decision should be left later in adult life.

Naturally, the transgender activist suggested parents must either make a transgender surrender, or the child will commit suicide:

BRANGHAM: Erin Reed, what do you make of that argument?

REED: The idea that transgender youth are being treated abusively by their parents, I think, is — stands in stark reality to some of the clips that you had played earlier as well as the testimony that I have seen at these hearings.

I’m — I watched a testimony in Nebraska where the mother of a transgender teenager spoke about how, for years, she was worried that she would come home and find her child dead. And then, after allowing transition, by going through an intensive medical process with therapists, doctors over the course of a few years, she stated, while pleading for her medical care for her child, that she went from having a depressed, suicidal teenage boy to a happy, thriving, successful teenage girl, a daughter.

PBS knows full well this isn’t expert testimony, it’s leftist advocacy:

Hi everyone! Here to fight for the rights of my transgender siblings every day and every night. pic.twitter.com/GV4CwVkQ7T

— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) March 1, 2023

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