The BBC’s director of complaints has ruled that the presenter Justin Webb broke the BBC’s rules on impartiality when he commented, in a discussion about a women’s chess tournament on Radio 4’s Today programme, that “trans women” are male.

This is shocking behaviour from the BBC: the national broadcaster, funded by public money and obliged by its charter to be accurate and without bias.

The BBC ruling said that Webb “gave the impression of endorsing one viewpoint in a highly controversial area”. This is extraordinary. Some people think the earth is flat, but to say that it is round is not an endorsement of one viewpoint – it’s a statement of fact. “Trans women” by definition are people born male who now identify as women. Since sex cannot change, they remain male. Polling has shown that a third of people are confused about what “trans woman” means, so it was helpful and appropriate of Webb to explain. If this is not allowed, people will be confused and potentially misled by BBC news stories. 

This isn’t the first time Webb has been criticised for pointing out that sex is not the same as gender identity. Last summer he asked Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey if there should “be spaces where biological males cannot go” in reference to trans-identifying males. He also got into trouble for saying that Professor Kathleen Stock had been “falsely” accused of transphobia by students at Sussex University.

It’s not just the BBC

Almost without exception, media reports in the past fortnight of the conviction and then sentencing of murderer Scarlet Blake referred to Blake as a woman, mostly without pointing out that he was male or even that he was transgender. (The Daily Telegraph was a notable exception.) The standard media excuse for calling male perpetrators women is that the court referred to them as such. In the Blake case, the judge in court referred to Blake’s sex at birth and transgender identity. 

The media regulator IPSO has recently revised its guidance on reporting sex and gender, but it seems that nothing much has changed in reporting. Male crimes are still being described (and recorded by the police and the criminal justice system) as committed by women. 

What happens next?

Until there is a policy change, or BBC senior executives find the moral courage to allow honest reporting about this issue, nothing will change. Webb has had a telling-off and now has to be careful what he says on the radio. 

There is pressure from both sides on this because we all know how important it is for news – especially crime reporting – to be reported accurately, and in clear factual language that everyone can understand. Forcing presenters to use the language of gender ideology means that some people won’t be able to decode the story. It hides the facts. 

Sex Matters and other campaign groups have been working on this for a while. We won’t stop until we get honest, accurate reporting on this issue. 

What you can do

Complaints are taken seriously, if only because they create work for the organisation receiving them. The BBC compiles a daily report of complaints received by number and nature. Bias is considered one of the most serious failures, so it registers when a lot of complaints are received about any one report.

1. Complain to the BBC when you see a BBC story you think is biased or inaccurate. Start with the Scarlet Blake story and Richard Garside’s thread on Twitter. Don’t give up if you’re fobbed off at stage one. Push on to stage two and then the Executive Complaints Unit.
2. Complain to IPSO if you see reporting in newspapers or news websites that is biased or inaccurate. You may have to complain to the publication directly first; it’s usually easy to find an email address on its website where you can send a complaint.
3. Send your local newspaper, radio station or news website a copy of our media guide, which is explained here. 
4. Complain to the other broadcasters too (here are the contacts for Sky News, ITV and Channel 4). 

Use our bad media watch reporting tool to let us know when you see biased reports and find out more about making a complaint.

The post Bias at the BBC appeared first on Sex Matters.

IPSO guides are not meant to be prescriptive, but to help member organisations understand how to apply the general principles of the Editors’ Code of Practice such as accuracy, privacy and discrimination to particular tricky circumstances. But in practice, media outlets have tended to interpret IPSO’s guidance as a requirement to use “preferred pronouns” and refer to people as female/women and male/men according to their self-identification rather than their sex.  

The new draft guidance recognises that:

“Reporting on sex and gender identity can generate wide and fierce debate. Journalists and editors are free to inform, scrutinise and challenge on this topical issue.” 

This is positive; however, IPSO does not define the concepts of sex and gender identity, nor does it address the crucial question of how they relate to each other. Journalists and editors are left without clarity about whether publishing accurate information about a trans person’s sex conflicts with respecting their privacy, or whether (as some activists argue) referring to sex in such instances could constitute discrimination. 

Striking the wrong balance

The draft guidance states that it “strikes a balance between the rights of the public to freedom of speech and the rights of the individual not to face personal discriminatory abuse”. But it encourages an expansive conception of what might constitute “discriminatory abuse” that will have a chilling effect. While the previous guidance asked editors to consider in relation to trans-identifying people: “Is the terminology being used pejorative or prejudicial?” the new guidance goes further, warning that:

“References to someone’s gender identity and/or sex may be pejorative, even in the absence of any pejorative term.” 

It is highly irresponsible to give such vague and sweeping encouragement for self-censorship when journalists and the media are under intense pressure from lobby groups not to report clearly and accurately on sex and gender issues. 

Overall, we think the current draft fails to improve on the flawed guidance published in 2016. In fact, it is worse. It is so vague, and so unrelated to the issues that arise in practice, that it is unlikely to provide any meaningful support for editors and journalists seeking to stand up to lobbyists’ demands that they cast aside accuracy. 

The question editors want answered is whether it is acceptable to mention a trans-identified person’s (biological) sex. For example, is it acceptable when that person is a rapist seeking admission to a women’s prison? When a male athlete is seeking to compete as a female? When a heterosexual man is self-describing as a lesbian? In each of these cases the man’s sex is more relevant to other people than his gender identity is.

Female prisoners are harmed when incarcerated alongside men; female athletes lose out when male athletes are allowed to compete with them; and lesbians by definition do not consider men as acceptable sexual partners, no matter how those men identify. The press should report accurately and fearlessly about these issues.

It is sometimes possible to refer to someone with neutral terms (describing them as a teacher, police officer, spokesperson, individual or defendant, for example) in stories where their sex is not relevant. But even in such stories there is no general prohibition against identifying a person’s sex. 

Journalists do not need to follow the Equal Treatment Bench Book

The guidance includes a section specifically on reporting on transgender defendants in court cases.

Here it says that while the principles under the Editors’ Code remain the same regarding accuracy, privacy, and discrimination, journalists should pay attention to the Equal Treatment Bench Book (Sex Matters has written about the problems with the Equal Treatment Bench Book previously).

Journalists have an obligation to ensure that they report accurately. If what happened in court was that a male person was addressed and referred to as a woman, then this is what journalists have an obligation to report. Journalists should not simply report words verbatim, if it is known that those words on their own are likely to mislead readers.

These are some of the people who have been called “she” in judgments and hearings by English courts.

Brandon/Chloe Walker	Sean/Rose Taylor	“V”	“MxM”	Mathew/Rose Whitby

If a court wishes to compel journalists to withhold information from the public domain, it must do this via a court order. 

The post IPSO’s updated guidance – our response appeared first on Sex Matters.