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Arkansas recently passed three discriminatory laws targeting transgender people, particularly trans youth, including measures denying them health care and banning them from sports. Local print coverage of these laws was often lacking, as journalists rarely talked to trans people they impact and largely failed to push back against bigotry and anti-trans misinformation.
A Media Matters review of local media from February 2 when the first legislation was introduced through April 7 the day after the third law was passed found that Arkansas newspapers printed 32 articles on one or more of these laws and only 12, about 38%, included the perspective of a trans or nonbinary person. About 56% of the articles came from one paper, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.