Nick Wallis on the BBC’s coverage of trans issues:
Just over a week ago, the BBC quietly acknowledged a profound failure of journalism in one of its online news reports. The apology ostensibly focused on a single crime story, but its detail and length appears to signify a cultural shift in an area which has been tearing the BBC apart for more than a decade.
The story concerned a 21-year-old man called Darren Rigby who had indicated he was preparing to act on his apparent murderous hatred of women and girls. Over the course of a week, in January this year, Rigby sent terrifying messages to three all-girls schools on Merseyside. Rigby told one: “I am on my way… with a revolver and a machete and I’m going to shoot and stab all of your girls. You terfs are going to learn to stop mocking, deadnaming and misgendering transwomen like me.” Terf stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”, a derogatory term for women who do not accept that biological males can be women.
In another email, Rigby said his intention was “to injure and kill as many girls as I can”.
There was a trial; he confessed to three charges of sending communications threatening death or serious harm. There was a BBC reporter at the trial.
Despite the newsworthiness of the details revealed in court, the BBC’s write-up of Rigby’s crimes ignored Rigby’s self-declared trans status. His apparent motive, so-called terfs “misgendering” him, was not mentioned. The article didn’t even make clear that Rigby’s violent threats were aimed exclusively at women and girls in single-sex schools.
Um…an unfortunate oversight. He wasn’t feeling 100% that day. He couldn’t find his pencil.
The omissions [might] have gone unnoticed were it not for another journalist sitting in court that day. Jamie Lopez, who writes for an online publication called The Southport Lead, published his piece on Rigby’s sentencing two days after the BBC. It contained all the details the BBC piece had left out. Lopez was mystified by the BBC’s take on the story. “It had gone up very quickly,” he told me, but the content was “bizarre”. The disparity between the articles was soon highlighted on social media and complaints were made.
…
On June 17, significant changes were made to the BBC report. Quotes from Rigby’s emails were added. His targeting of all-girls schools was recorded. The formal BBC apology written below the “updated” report noted: “This article was originally published without including key details about this case due to miscommunication between BBC reporters in court and the writers.”
That’s quite the “miscommunication”. You’d think those key details would be key enough to report.
One journalist working in BBC national radio complains that they are “still stuck with the chilling effect” of the complaints unit ruling against Justin Webb for explaining that “trans women” were “males” and Martine Croxall for rolling her eyes at the words “pregnant people” in a script. “We still need unambiguous messaging that restores proper public-service journalism,” the journalist said.
Indeed they do.
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