It started as a data breach at a faith-friendly medical group that opposes transgender therapies and same-sex parenting.
It morphed into a quasi-investigative piece co-written by three Washington Post reporters and one contributor –- none of them a religion specialist –- about “conservative doctors” who have influenced public discussion about abortion and transgender individuals.
When I first saw this, I wondered what issue was so important that it required a triple byline, especially since the story was originally broken by other outlets weeks before. The following piece — “Documents show how conservative doctors influenced abortion, trans rights” — ran last week in the Post:
A small group of conservative doctors has sought to shape the nation’s most contentious policies on abortion and transgender rights by promoting views rejected by the medical establishment as scientific fact, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post that describe the group’s internal strategies.
Actually, the entire “medical establishment” doesn’t reject these views. This is another example of erasing an important debate.
The records show that after long struggling to attract members, the American College of Pediatricians gained outsize political influence in recent years, primarily by using conservative media as a megaphone in its quest to position the group as a reputable source of information.
The organization has successfully lobbied since 2021 for laws in more than a half-dozen states that ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths, with its representatives testifying before state legislatures against the guidelines recommended by mainstream medical groups, according to its records. It gained further national prominence this year as one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit to limit access to mifepristone, a key abortion drug.
That put it in the media crosshairs, for sure.
Despite efforts to invoke the credibility of the medical profession, the American College of Pediatricians is viewed with skepticism by the medical establishment. For years, the group has presented statistics and talking points to state legislators, public school officials and the American public as settled science while internal documents emphasize how religion and morality influence its positions. Meeting minutes from 2021 describe how the organization worked with religious groups to “affect the idea makers through the high courts, professional literature, and legislatures.”
A health professional organization working with religious groups — is this a bad thing? For various reasons (that I won’t go into here), I am in touch with a mental health world that is enormously open to yoga despite its Hindu connections and a type of therapy known as dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) that is honeycombed with Buddhist thought.
Face it: The health profession already has religious connections.
We read further that the ACP promotes conversion therapy (people who experience same-sex attraction who want to remain celibate or alter their sexual behavior) and opposes Medicaid funds for puberty blockers, hormones or surgeries for transgender recipients. There are two paragraphs of quotes from Dr. Jill Simons, ACP director, followed by two paragraphs from a Stanford University psychologist trashing the group. And then:
The records of the American College of Pediatricians — a cache of more than 10,000 confidential files including strategic plans, meeting minutes, membership rosters, financial statements and email exchanges spanning at least 15 years — were exposed after the organization left the contents of its Google Drive publicly accessible, according to two people who individually accessed the material following the inadvertent breach and shared copies with The Post. The Post examined the documents’ metadata, including the dates of each file’s creation and modification, to determine that they have not been recently manipulated. The document breach was first reported by Wired.
A data breach is any company’s worst nightmare.
Someone must have already been lurking about the ACP’s site, testing various links, and thus discovered the unsecured Google drive. I read the original Wired story and noticed that Wired did not publicize who discovered the files.
Watching the above video (where MSNBC mistakenly said the Post broke the story), writer Lauren Weber said that someone leaked the information to their tech columnist Taylor Lorenz.
Checking around, I found a May 5 Daily Signal piece that explained it all:
Small nonprofit organizations often lack a sophisticated technological infrastructure to combat cyberattacks. In the case of ACPeds, the organization came under several targeted attacks April 24 when hackers attempted to access its website servers, email accounts, and social media accounts. Its cybersecurity measures repelled most of them, although an archived website — unused since 2019 — was breached.
ACPeds immediately moved to shut down the website, but documents on a Google Drive were exposed and then leaked to the writer at Wired.
The Wired story, by the way, ran May 2. A more complete story ran May 17 in Mother Jones. Thus, I am curious why it took six weeks for the Post follow-up. Back to the Post’s piece:
The organization’s quest to ban the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors has culminated in a string of recent legislative wins following lobbying in at least eight states, internal documents show.
Arkansas first enacted such a law in 2021, after Michelle Cretella, then executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, described such care as “experimental and dangerous” to legislators. A federal appeals court temporarily blocked it.
Some 20 state legislatures have passed versions of the law, the article said. It appears that this group, labeled “a tiny group of fringe conservatives” by one detractor, still has 700-plus members. While that is dwarfed by the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics, it’s no mystery why many doctors may sympathize with the group — but may not belong: It would be professional suicide in many of their circles to do so.
Because of the many religious connotations in this story, I am curious why one of the paper’s religion specialists wasn’t called in hopefully to add some balance to this narrative. The views this organization has on medical procedures for transgender people, about same-sex marriage, about the family, are squarely within the purview of orthodox Christian moral theology (Catholic leaders are certainly speaking out).
Yet, this group –- because it’s managed to get the attention of elected officials who already have doubts about puberty blockers et al –- is portrayed as this villain that somehow corralled public opinion by advertising fake medical views. I mean, the writers even threw in the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, which the Post itself exposed in 2018 (which I wrote about here).
The whole set-up of the piece disturbed me. It felt like the writers searched about to see who could best trash the ACP and came up with … someone from the Whitman-Walker Institute? Anyone reporting out of Washington, D.C., knows that Whitman-Walker is as pro-LGBTQ+ as a group can be.
Why would the writers get an LGBTQ+ spokesman to talk about a pediatric group? You tell me.
The whole piece was such an obvious pile-on, but hey, it received 4,745 comments and obviously lots of clicks, so who cares, right?
In terms of journalism, however, I am curious why, six weeks after the story originally broke, the writers didn’t come up with a new angle. For instance, instead of going after the credentials or professionalism of two of the doctors named in the piece, why didn’t they seek out other ACP members whose names were made available in the breach?
Maybe get some different opinions, alternate points of view, that sort of thing. Or look further afield to folks like this lesbian who is a former manager at a transgender center in St. Louis and why she quit her job last year.
It's not my job to think up alternate angles for media outlets, but regurgitating what had already appeared in other outlets just didn’t make the grade by a long shot.
FIRST IMAGE: Graphic distributed via the Twitter feed of the American College of Pediatricians