by Nick Wallis, The Times
After years of dismissing concerns about its reporting of transgender issues, the Corporation has apologised for a story it got badly wrong
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”. This month at Liverpool crown court Rigby was sentenced to two years and four months in prison after admitting three charges of sending communications threatening death or serious harm. The specific nature of Rigby’s threats was made public during sentencing and there was a BBC reporter present throughout. 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. The BBC report bore a striking resemblance to a press release published on the Merseyside police website, which also elided all mention of Rigby’s emails.