Sex, gender and the BBC

Chelsea Manning was in the news in 2015, and the BBC was very enthusiastic about covering every detail of the Chelsea Manning story. It was around the time he was allowed to begin his medical transition in jail (in case you didn’t know, I don’t share the belief in gender identity theory and so use biologically accurate pronouns). And it was the first time I came up against activist language for the first time.

I had been slow on the uptake: I knew nothing about gender identity theory, and considered myself only vaguely feminist. So when I was told to write scripts about Chelsea Manning with female pronouns, the limited response I had was ‘it’s not true, he’s not a woman’.

It was my job to ensure scripts were accurate, and it was plain that in the most literal way I was being asked to write something that wasn’t accurate. ‘It’s not true’ was a very simplistic defence, but I had nothing else in my arsenal. I don’t want to make out that I was the only one arguing for accurate or even more nuanced language, because journalists generally don’t want to mislead their audience, but it’s not my intention to bring colleagues into this story. Ultimately the female pronouns won, with sex self-identification embedded at the heart of the BBC’s editorial decision-making on sex and gender.

This little dispute encapsulates the difference between activism and factivism in the media landscape. One one side: those who want to use inaccurate language that normalises a particular belief system. On the other: those who want to share facts, using accurate language, and allow the audience to make up their own minds.

If the world weren’t upside down, one of those sides would be taken more seriously than the other by senior editors, and it wouldn’t be the side shilling for anti-facts. One side would be described as campaigners, and it wouldn’t be the side trying to ensure that scripts are accurate and truthful.

I’ve no doubt that were any of my former editors to read this, they would be pointing to my social media since leaving the BBC and observing complacently: ‘Well, we knew she was an activist all along’. Could this be because they can’t in all honesty tell the difference between activism and ‘factivism’? And it’s vital that they should, because unless the facts are acknowledged we can’t have that further editorial conversation about when it might be appropriate to disguise them, and when it absolutely isn’t.

It’s grimacingly obvious to state that the facts should not be ejected from the Overton Window, and to observe that they should instead be at the centre of it, with decisions about impartiality and sensitivity built upon those facts. It’s a tragedy that BBC News continues to turn its face away from them.

On whether or not sex is determined by the brain, there are not two points of view of equal weight. The facts are, indisputably, on one side of the argument. It’s important to remember that gender identity believers think they are focussed on the real facts - but then, it’s up to senior editors to do the tiny bit of research required, and disabuse them of their misconceptions. At the BBC, this clarification has already been achieved with climate change: and the science is even more settled on the biology of sex. There is a Disinformation unit and the Verify project to tackle counter-factual narratives on other subjects. Why not on this?

When Tim Davie became BBC Director-General in 2020, he said: ‘News sources such as the BBC need to work harder than ever..to separate fact from fiction’. In another interview he said: ‘We do believe there is a truth, and we know it’s a somewhat impossible task to get to perfection in the endeavours we make, but that is what we’re going to do…We have to be activists for impartiality’.

That’s what I thought I was doing. But the sense I got from interactions with some editors was often one of bare tolerance. I remember, after receiving the laughably redacted results of a Subject Access Request, trying to work out which of them was dismissively calling me ‘this woman’ in their private exchanges. Some were understanding: however I suffered mounting frustration at having to fruitlessly repeat the question: ‘Do you understand the facts around the immutability of sex? Are you able publicly to acknowledge that they are not opinions?’

The BBC has a section in its Editorial Guidelines titled ‘Harm or Offence’. It comes several sections after trust, truth and accuracy. But on sex and gender, BBC News has leapfrogged truth, right into ‘harm or offence’ and only then respects it with regard to one particular small group, gender identity advocates. Harm and offence to women, to children, to female victims of sexual assault, to lesbians and gay men are simply not given the same weight by the BBC’s editorial stance.

This means the BBC breaches its own Editorial Guidelines every day in its coverage of sex and gender, it breaches its public remit to educate and inform, and it wholeheartedly ignores Tim Davie’s plea to separate truth from fiction. It wasn’t partisan to try to change this: it was my job.

ReplyForward