The BBC is reprimanding a journalist – for the crime of telling the truth

Mar 3, 2024 by Jill

by Michael Deacon, Telegraph:

Justin Webb made an indisputable statement of fact about trans women. So why is he in trouble for it?

When the BBC described the murderer Scarlet Blake simply as “a woman”, the more generously inclined among its viewers might have put it down to human error. After all, it’s possible that the BBC’s journalists were genuinely unaware that Blake is male. Had they known this, surely they would have said “a trans woman”, in order to avoid giving viewers the false impression that a brutally violent and sexually motivated crime had been committed by someone female. Wouldn’t they?

Sadly, I doubt it. I suspect they knew full well that Blake was male, and consciously chose to say “a woman”. This is the only conclusion I can draw from the BBC’s subsequent treatment of Justin Webb. Because the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit has upheld a complaint against the Today programme’s co-presenter for using the following phrase.

“Trans women – in other words, males.”

Every syllable of that phrase is factually accurate. All trans women are, by definition, male. If they were female, they wouldn’t be trans women – they would be “cisgender” (i.e., biological) women. Mr Webb was simply making this clear, for the benefit of any listeners who were not fully abreast of trans terminology.

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