Aside from the Trump Spliced/speech debacle, there was an article in yesterday's ST entitled "Emails reveal BBC Women Complained over trans reporting" highlighting the BBC's hard line approach to the subject mostly at odds with the mood of women generally about the issue and certainly, I imagine, their stance wouldn't be a surprise to many on this site.
Some of the main points:
"Martine Croxall had been found to have breached impartiality guidelines when she appeared faintly exasperated after correcting "pregnant people" on her autocue to "women".
That it was felt that the BBC had been "captured" by activists promoting a "pro trans agenda" to the detriment of women's rights is one of the criticisms in the memo that helped precipitate the resignations of Davie and his news chief executive Deborah Turness. In this document sent to the BBC board last month, Michael Prescott former journalist claimed that the specialist "LGBT and identity" desk had effectively censored stories that "raised difficult questions about the trans debate" He accused the desk of "a constant drip feed of one sided stories.....celebrating trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity" Women within the BBC have been making that case for several years. More than a dozen emails dating back to 2020 seen by the ST show that female staff raised a catalogue of complaints with executives that were rebuffed or ignored. Their objections ranged from stories that referred to biologically male transgender sex offenders as women to articles that avoided using the words "girls" and "women" when discussing menstruation and birth control. The women also described a culture of fear where even seasoned correspondents did not dare veer from the Stonewall-mandated position on trans issues in case they were accused of "transphobia". They added that the BBC ignored stories that could be deemed critical of the trans gender movement, even when they were covered by rival news outlets. One BBC worker said: "Any questioning or insufficiently enthusiastic championing risked being labelled as bigoted.....It felt like activism, not news" The article went on to state "Samantha Smith a former editor of the southwest edition of Inside Out spoke up about the reporting of Karen White, a prisoner who was biologically male, but identified as transgender and sexually assaulted two inmates at a women's prison. Smith who left the BBC in 2020 felt that the broadcaster should have reported that White was a man but when she raised this in a meeting of senior managers was told: "Trans women are women" She felt that the undercurrent of this statement was that she was a "bigot" who needed to be "re-educated" However, the article does go on to suggest that there has been a shift in a more sympathetic stance towards women in an interview with the Darlington nurses who were protesting against a transgender colleague's use of their changing rooms. It described the colleague as a "biological male" a significant linguistic change.
