BBC ‘capitulating to cult ideology’ in its transgender reporting guidelines, activists say

Gender-critical group Sex Matters says Tim Davie, BBC director-general, ignored its request for a meeting

The BBC has been accused of “capitulating to cult ideology” by gender-critical activists reacting to its new transgender reporting guidelines.
The new briefing note for the corporation’s journalists, unveiled in December, said individuals often have a “big personal stake” in reporting on trans issues, making it a “challenging area”.
Journalists were told that describing someone as “either a women’s rights activist or an anti-trans activist is an editorial choice”.
The briefing note was leaked online yesterday, just weeks after Justin Webb was reprimanded by the BBC’s complaints unit for saying trans women are “in other words, males”.
The women’s rights group Sex Matters said it provided “ample wiggle room for excluding gender-critical views”.
Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, has declined a request from the group to meet him and other senior officials to discuss the Corporation’s coverage, it emerged on Friday.
Fiona McAnena, the director of campaigns at Sex Matters, said: “We wrote to the director-general in good faith and he fobbed us off. Considering the extent of the BBC’s engagement with trans activist lobby groups in recent years, it’s a shame he didn’t want to hear another perspective.
“There are parallels with the Scottish Government’s refusal to meet sex-based rights campaigners ahead of the disastrous self-ID bill, and we all know how that turned out.
“It’s troubling to see such an important British institution allow itself to capitulate to a cult-like ideology. We genuinely wanted to engage with the BBC before it damages its reputation and credibility any further, and we still do.”
The nine-page internal briefing document on “reporting sex and gender” says: “Debates, legislation and policies relating to transgender issues have been increasingly in the spotlight in recent years. Some of the issues are contested, with strongly held and sometimes incompatible views and no settled consensus.
“Individuals often feel they have a big personal stake in how these issues are reported. This can make it a challenging area for BBC journalism.
“We need to consider the framing of stories, the language we use, the tone of coverage, the context we provide and the labels we apply to the views of contributors. For example, describing someone as either a women’s rights activist or an anti-trans activist is an editorial choice.
“We may also need to challenge claims or assumptions by contributors. Care is needed, for example with use of the term ‘transphobic’ to describe people who would not themselves accept that label.”
Presenters were told to challenge guests who accuse others of transphobia. It advised that “care is needed” when people are labelled “transphobic” and the term should be interrogated during on-air debate.
Ms McAnena said the briefing was wrong in numerous cases, including giving the “false impression” that a law was needed to overturn conversion therapy, and misrepresenting the issue of “trans-identifying men in women’s sport”.
“It appears superficially fair while providing ample wiggle room for excluding gender-critical views,” she said.
“If the BBC had engaged with experts on sex-based rights rather than solely with trans activist groups, the result would have been more balanced and accurate.”
Last week, David Jordan, the BBC’s director of editorial standards, revealed the new briefing note on trans issues had been published in December.
He told MPs that it was “unfortunate” that Webb “didn’t define his terms a bit more”.
“Had he said ‘biological male’ or ‘born male’ then it wouldn’t have been a problem,” he said. “As you know it’s a very sensitive subject for trans women to be called male rather than female.”
Mr Jordan added: “That’s part of the debate and we need to steer very carefully through that difficult debate, make sure we are not offending either side of it or using terms that are clearly offensive to either side or seem to them to be taking sides in it.
“Had he talked about ‘biological male’ it would have been fine, it wouldn’t have been an issue.
“Just asserting that all trans women are male is not what the BBC’s style is on this. We did produce in December of last year a long note on reporting sex and gender in which all of this is made clear and all our journalists should have been aware of it.”
A month earlier, Naomi Cunningham from Sex Matters had written to Mr Davie to ask for a meeting, after a Woman’s Hour programme on the appointment of a trans woman to head an endometriosis charity.
Steph Richards, a trans woman, was appointed the chief executive of womb health charity Endometriosis South Coast last year.
Critics of the appointment pointed out that it was impossible for someone who was born male to suffer from the painful condition, in which tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows elsewhere inside the body.
Ms Cunningham wrote: “The dominant culture at the BBC appears to define acknowledging the reality and immutability of binary sex as bigotry, both within the workforce and when engaging with external parties.
“This is entirely incompatible with the BBC’s status as the national, taxpayer-funded broadcaster, with a statutory duty to be impartial.
“It is also a fringe position held by only a small minority of Britons. Polling consistently shows broad rejection of the assertion that ‘trans women are women’ and of the claim that trans women (men who identify as women) should have a right of access to female-only spaces, services or sports.
“The embedding of a problematic ideological approach to sex and gender has affected the BBC’s output across the board, including news and current affairs, sport, entertainment and children’s programming.”
She suggested a meeting with Mr Davie and other senior members of the BBC. 
In his reply, Mr Davie did not respond to the offer of a meeting. “I wanted to check that you had seen the public response about the Women’s Hour broadcast you wrote about, and I have included a copy below,” he wrote.
“If you would like to follow up on any of your specific points through our formal process, then the team can ensure you have a response with the opportunity to escalate via the BBC Complaint Framework.”
There was a meeting between two members of Sex Matters and the BBC in Oct 2022 but no new guidelines were discussed.
A spokesman for the BBC said it did not consult externally because it was an internal note. This is not the same as the editorial guidelines, which involve a lot of engagement.