I have used this technique before and cannot work out why this time it is not working.
'news_category' is a custom taxonomy of my custom post type 'News'.
I am getting the taxonomy of the current post (which is custom post type 'news') using get_the_term_list, replacing the spaces with '-' and using the variable in my query.
If I echo the query it gives me the exact string I am expecting - and if I manually enter this string into the query, it works, but the variable doesnt.
$cats = get_the_term_list( $post->ID, 'news_category' );
$cat = str_replace( ' ', '-', $cats );
$category = strtolower( $cat );
echo $category;
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'news',
'news_categories' => $category,
'post__not_in' => array( $post->ID )
);
$sidebar_category = new WP_Query( $args );