The End of Press Freedom?

Ideology Overtakes Law and Proscribes Journalist Ethics in Favour of Lobbyist Diktats

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Since last autumn, I have been writing fellow journalists regarding stories where their reporting is factually incorrect when referring to individuals who claim to hold a “gender identity”. These news outlets’ and journalists’ articles demonstrate how media today has become an ideological mouthpiece for the “transgender” lobby. In the press queries I sent to my colleagues, I explained my project:

I am writing a story about the “guidelines” or rules which oblige or pressure journalists to report men who identify as “transgender” as “she”, “transwoman”, or “women”. Given our profession requires a lens of objectivity and truth for which we must honestly represent facts to our readers, I would be interested in knowing why you chose to refer to a man in your article below as a “woman” and as “she”. I would love to include your perspective as a journalist in my piece.

In my press queries, I included a link to the story written by the journalist or press agency while asking detailed questions. For instance, in this article Shiona McCallum, a BBC journalist, went out of her way to avoid saying the word “woman” and instead writes “anyone who menstruates”. I inquired why ideological privilege has been offered to those who have a “special identity” over material reality.

Many journalists and media entities to whom I sent my query did not answer. This hardly surprised me given the ideological terrain today, which has resulted in many journalists believing that, should they not comply with the current social pressure of gender ideology, their careers will be ended in a heartbeat. I did, however, receive some answers to my query which demonstrate the dogmatic hold of journalists to an unwritten and unofficial commandment: “Thou shalt not misgender”.

For this December 2022 story on the execution of Amber McLaughlin, a man who identified as “transgender”, I contacted the Associated Press (AP) which authored the story. Nicole Meir, Media Relations Manager of the Associated Press responded to me: “Thank you for checking. I’m including relevant AP Stylebook guidance here.  See below the Stylebook transgender and pronoun entry. Hope this helps”. I read through the guidance and  immediately noted similarities with guidance from other British press and media authorities. The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), Office of Communications (Ofcom) and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) have also set up similar guides often beginning with a perfectly ideological “definition” of the word “transgender”:

transgender (adj.) Describes people whose gender does not match the one usually associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Identify people as transgender only when relevant, and use the name by which they live publicly. Unless it is central to the story, avoid mention of a person’s gender transition or gender-affirmation surgery in news coverage, which can be intrusive and insensitive.

This definition is purely ideological and is not based in any scientific or medical reality despite the fact that being set up as a definition automatically lends a patina of authority. The definition is still nonsensical—“gender” must “match” that what is “usually associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.” Through the formalisation of this and various other ideological terms, the AP Stylebook establishes what is to be parroted within media while the journalist is given no choice but to accept a social fiction of alternative names (even if not legally changed) and fake pronouns. More to the point, journalists must avoid referencing what is allegedly a major facet of the individual’s life (otherwise, why has “guidance” been drawn up in the first place?) in their reporting. Today’s journalists are handed a recipe for how to do stories about or involving subjects who maintain fictional identities which have various secondary impacts on the individual’s name, sex category, and their past. Where gender ideology is concerned, the task of the journalist is now prescribed, unquestionable, and unmentionable. All this flies in the face of every journalistic ethos regarding news accuracy and reporting.

Another similarity between IPSO, Ofcom and the NUJ is in the wording of how we are supposed to represent people who claim to have a “gender identity” which rests in the word “guidance”. Guidance is one of those words which sounds gentle—it sounds like friendly advice. Yet, coming from a major media organisation that can potentially investigate a journalist or a newspaper, it carries a less-than-friendly tone and a hearty punitive undertow.

I continued to study the AP guidance Meir had sent me and it read like an ideological list of how to discuss people who identify as “transgender” beginning with this: “Growing numbers of people, including some transgender, nonbinary, agender or gender-fluid people, use they/them/their as a gender-neutral singular personal pronoun”. Nowhere in this “guidance” was any explanation of this demographic for whom I was to toe a linguistic and journalistic line in my reporting; and certainly the list of this “growing” demographic does nothing other than layer on the propaganda that this cohort needed special treatment. Still, I wondered, why?

The guideline states:

They as a singular pronoun may be confusing to some readers and amount to a roadblock that stops them from reading further. At the same time, though, efforts to write without pronouns to avoid confusion may make people feel censored or invisible.

How to balance those priorities? Try to honor both your readers and your story subjects. As in all news writing, clarity is paramount.

Be sure that the phrasing does not imply more than one person. Rephrase if needed to avoid confusion about the antecedent.

Don’t refer to preferred or chosen pronouns. Instead, the pronouns they use, whose pronouns are, who uses the pronouns, etc.

In general, do not use neopronouns such as xe or zim; they are rarely used and are unrecognizable as words to general audiences.

They/them/their take plural verbs even when used as a singular pronoun, and the singular reflexive themself is also acceptable when referring to people who use they/them/their.

Do not presume maleness in constructing a sentence by defaulting to he/his/him.

So many questions emerged as I read this long list intended for the anal retentive: What on earth does honouring my readers mean? Is this journalism or self-help? Who instructed the AP as to the use of third-person plural pronouns to refer to the third-person singular? Why is the AP codifying guidelines that resemble the website which lays out “guidelines” on how to greet members of the Royal Family? And xe and zim, like any other made up word, will invariably confuse readers as much as the use of they to refer to one person.

The ideological capture within the AP was as daunting as it was hilarious. I found myself cackling as I read through the diktat. Yet, this guidance raises far more serious questions about what journalists are required to produce within their writing, begging the question: If “clarity is paramount”, why has the AP become the politburo for gender ideology? It is clear that the AP guidance explicitly embraces the language and claims of gender ideology as posited by transgender activists. Journalists are effectively being coerced from objectively framing coverage on this issue.

So, I responded to Meir’s email, “While these are self-perceptions, the journalist's role is not to parrot ideology, hence I question the AP guidance you have sent me”. I went on to cite some of the pieces of the guidance beginning with the AP’s understanding of “transgender” and wrote: “This is incoherent because gender is a social fiction, a stereotype—nobody is born with a gender. So, the AP guidance is an ideologically captured one since nothing here is factual”. I related to Meir that “guidance” effectively asks journalists to lie, noting that amongst my colleagues, many journalists feel pressured into calling a man a woman within their stories. I continued, “How does this work exactly? Does the AP also have guidance on editing out extramarital affairs of politicians, so it doesn't hurt their feelings as well? Or that if we find or expose clandestine economic payoffs between government and corporations that we must also disguise this in the interest of someone's personal esteem or self-security?” I concluded, “The AP guidance makes no sense since it serves as an enforcement, it would seem, of what is nothing other than ideology”. I finalised my followup query, asking when the AP created this guidance and which external organisations were involved in its drafting. Needless to say, I didn’t hear back from Meir.

I reached out to the Australian Associated Press (AAP) which produced the article, “Transgender woman sues female-only app Giggle for Girls for alleged discrimination” with a similar press query to that which I sent the AP. Andrew Drummond, editor of the AAP, responded: “In the article you reference, AAP has clearly introduced the individual as a transgender woman and thereafter used the terminology adopted by the court in its privileged and public information”. The problem with Drummond’s leaning upon the Australian court is that current government regulations do not mandate how “gender identity” should be understood or framed outside “individual personal records”. The legal fiction created by allowing men or women to change their “gender” in Australia was never intended to be a mandate as to how the public or media must think of or refer to these individuals. Indeed, the “Australian Government Guidelines on the Recognition of Sex and Gender” make no mention of pronouns or media rules that prescribe thought or speech. Similarly, courts across the world that have granted changes to “gender” within official documents have done so with the understanding that this change is a legal fiction, a lie, extended for reasons that deserve further investigation. As others cases have demonstrated in recent years, changing biological facts such as age have been deemed illegal, yet the concept of a legal fiction of “gender” has been allowed in many countries to the detriment of free speech and women’s rights. So why has the AAP fudged on what was never a legal ruling to the media?

Drummond goes on to write, “More broadly, AAP observes the recommendations of media and community advisory groups such as Mindframe and ACON. But most importantly, AAP observes the requests of individuals and how they chose to be identified”. This part raised concern since one of the two NGOs to which he refers, Mindframe, is a charity that “supports safe media reporting, portrayal and communication about suicide, mental ill-health, alcohol and other drugs”. As Stephanie Davies-Arai’s work with Transgender Trend in the UK has long demonstrated, threats of suicide have been used to coerce parents and institutions into accepting the transgender narrative. Now, in a surreal twist, the AAP is effectively signalling to Australian journalists that, should they fail to refer to these individuals as they demand, they might be guilty of shuttling them to their suicides. Aside from acting as an Orwellian ideological weapon, it also sets a dangerous precedent for journalists and media outlets.

The other charity that Drummond mentions, ACON, began as the AIDS Council of NSW in 1985 and like many AIDS organisations of its day, ACON’s mandate was expanded to become something of a lesbian and gay rights organisation with an eventual adding of the rest of the alphabet soup. On the 2017 Transgender Day of Remembrance, ACON released “A Language Guide” establishing linguistic parameters for the general public. Again, while these guidances are frequently highlighted throughout the myriad astroturfed transgender NGOs, none of these quasi-Orwellian guidances hold any water legally. Even the Australian Press Council has established “Advisory Guidelines” for the media, while highlighting the need to “avoid substantial offence, distress or prejudice or substantial risk to safety”.

I responded to Drummond, asking him where he thought the line to these individuals’ distress or offence should be drawn, while the public remains confused as to the many stories referring to rapists as “she” or as “women”. I also queried why journalists are asked to lie on this one specific issue and not within other areas of reporting on “political conflicts of interest”. When the media subject involves gender ideology this is when journalists are expected to mitigate hurt reputations or feelings while partaking in a social and future historical lie. I did not receive a response to my followup query.

On the other side of this ideological debate are organisations that offer more clarity on this issue. For instance, Sex Matters, a human-rights organisation that focuses on sex-based rights in the UK, published its “Media handbook on sex and gender” (2022) recommending that the term TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) not be used.  This handbook also elucidates the current dilemma of journalistic representation obfuscating the truth while spelling out the letter of the law on this issue to include the rights of journalists like myself in working through this ideologically-heavy terrain.

Yet, both the AP and AAP—in addition to hundreds of media outlets and news publications in the English-speaking world—refer to women critical of gender ideology in specifically this way. For many feminists who have carefully followed the media coverage of this issue over the years, they have witnessed the lightning-speed at which the gender lobby’s prescriptive language set out in “media guidelines” has been adopted by newspapers, television and radio news outlets and various journalist organisations and unions. Aside from these media organisations never having conducted an open consultation, asking their own journalists about linguistic mandates, which is in itself worrying, these guidelines have been implanted through backdoor lobby groups, astroturfed by LGBT+ organisations in the US such as GLAAD and the HRC and Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, and Press for Change in the UK, just to name a few.

The swift political lockstep to adopt linguistic rules within a profession whose mandate is ostensibly to report the truth of the news indicates, quite paradoxically, that sex might actually be a reality.

I reached out to the UK’s Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) which issued its “Draft guidance on reporting of sex and gender identity” last month. The latest guidance and its preceding version from 2016 offer prescriptive language similarly reflected within the guidelines published by the AP and the AAP. In its recent edition of the guidance published last—note the words “draft guidance”—IPSO subtly attempts to acknowledge this guidance as politically mired, aside from presenting serious challenges to the Editors’ Code.

I asked IPSO about these conflicts between the Editors’ Code and its guidance, noting its commissioned Mediatique report from 2020, “Examining trends in editorial standards in coverage of transgender issues”, to which it links on its “Transgender guidance” web page. I note that this report together with IPSO’s own buttressing on its website of various “transgender” lobby groups creates a massive conflict of interest. On the one hand, IPSO’s guidance on this subject is informed by lobby groups that are themselves the product of astroturfing by various organisations, while this report that ostensibly examines “trends” of editorial coverage of this subject matter is anything but; the reporting is the result of strong-arming under the auspices of guidance coming through myriad astroturfed lobby groups that posture themselves as LGBT+ or simply “transgender” rights groups.

More troubling is that IPSO’s “Transgender guidance” web page lists as “external resources” the public relations firm, On Road Media, and the following “transgender” organisations and lobby groups: Stonewall, the Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES), Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids, Press for Change, and Scottish Transgender Alliance. Effectively, IPSO is scratching the backs of the very organisations that informed and influenced its own guidance. Not only is there no framework logically or scientifically for “gender identity” but IPSO has been so entirely captured by the “transgender” lobby that it issues guidance for the reporting of individuals who identify as “transgender” relying upon the very organisations creating this social fiction to underwrite its own “guidance”.

Within its latest draft guidance in a section entitled “Negotiating different views on how to describe someone’s gender identity”, IPSO highlights a specific case, “A woman v Daily Mail”, stating that “the Complaints Committee recognised that the choice of language by a victim of sexual assault to refer to her attacker was significant”. IPSO singles out this case, noting how, in a Daily Mail article (July 2021) , a man who committed sexual assault is referred to this man as “she/her” despite the victim having referred to this man with reality-based, appropriate male pronouns:

A woman complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation, through a representative, that the Daily Mail breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) and Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “I was sexually assaulted in a women’s prison... by a fellow inmate with male genitalia”, published on 24 July 2021.

IPSO sums up the result of its investigation to the complaint, stating: “The Committee found no breach of the Editors’ Code as the complainant had agreed to the change before publication”. Yet, IPSO’s “Editors' Code of Practice”, Clause 1 on Accuracy, forms a significant basis for journalism. IPSO’s judgment in this case flies in the face of media accuracy since I know of no journalist who vets a lie with her sources. Given that its investigation weighed on the side of fictional self-identity and the fact that IPSO included this case within its latest “draft guidance”, one can easily see how IPSO perverts its own code through the fiction of “preferred pronouns” and other forced descriptions that inevitably sabotage media accuracy.

I questioned IPSO about its statement when announcing the release of its commissioned 2020 report, where it echoes Mediatique’s research: “There has been a measurable evolution in terminology”. I share my observations with IPSO that this claim is patently false, noting that “newer” terminology has been artificially forced onto the public with no autochthonous evolution of language whatsoever. One need only tune into any news show and watch the presenters tripping over their words, backtracking and apologising for “getting it wrong” as they demonstrate a visible discomfort for this “guided lie” as they use air quotes to signal their disagreement with what they feel pressured into doing.

I made further inquiries of IPSO, noting the judgment in the Maya Forstater case that established that gender-critical views are protected as a belief under the Equality Act 2010.

Given that journalists would also be protected by the Employment Appeal Tribunal’s judgment, I added that it would seem that IPSO “has no legal ground to require or recommend that journalists refer to those men and women who identify as ‘transgender’ in any specific way advocated by this organisation or the groups that seem to have successfully lobbied it”. I wrote IPSO that, as a Scorpio who resists generalisations and derision about my zodiac sign, I would never wish for any zodiac sign to be inscribed into mandatory journalistic guidance in the vein of “protection” or special category status. I asked why IPSO has gone to great lengths to mandate speech related to this specific demographic: individuals who identify as “transgender”.

In its 2016 guidance, IPSO writes, “The press should not make pejorative or prejudicial reference to an individual’s sex or gender identity”. I have to wonder if IPSO is aware that pejorative is an extremely elastic term with the “transgender” lobby, which views anything but mandated speech as “hate speech” and as an attempt to exterminate this demographic. So, I further queried Davidson, noting the problems in the media today where readers are given stories of rapists who are reported as “women” and as “she”, creating a conflict between their own “Editors' Code of Practice”, Clause 1 (Accuracy), and the desires of a specific demographic that demands that we ignore basic journalistic ethics. I enquired, “What would be the possible repercussions for journalists in the UK—staff or freelance—who refuse to commit to the social and political lie that your policy commands?”

John Davidson of IPSO replied to my press query and offered few answers to my question. But where I specifically asked if the IPSO guidance was “set in stone” or if journalists could “choose to simply represent the reality of a subject's sex” without facing risk to their employment, Davidson responded, “Our resources are intended to provide editors and journalists with a framework for thinking through important questions related to reporting and give examples of relevant decisions by IPSO’s Complaints Committee”. I pushed further on this, and Davidson replied, “Our guidance is not mandatory. Complaints about coverage are determined against the Editors’ Code of Practice”.

I made a similar media query to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), a trade union for journalists in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Frances Rafferty of the NUJ responded to my query stating, “We can...confirm that our guidance is for journalist members and is not mandatory”. While this is pretty straightforward, my thoughts shift to IPSO’s Complaints Committee ruling which seems to weigh in on this issue while also claiming, similar to the NUJ, that their guidelines are also not mandatory.

I sent a press query to the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries within the United Kingdom. My questions to Ofcom, however, were far more complex than my NUJ inquiry, since Ofcom has greater powers over broadcast media, and like IPSO, it has the power to investigate journalists and media outlets.

I pointed to several of their decisions regarding these radio shows: Paul Ellery in the Morning (16 September 2019), Sheffield in Focus (31 July 2018), and the Q Breakfast Show (9 November 2017). All three cases are fascinating for diverse reasons. In these last two cases, Sheffield in Focus and the Q Breakfast Show, were both flagged for discussions around pronouns that they were told to use. It is clear reading through the transcript that the presenters were negotiating language through sheer fiat, with which they were clearly not comfortable and by which they were fully confused. The presenters of Sheffield in Focus were discussing a news article “in which an equality campaigner, who identifies as non-binary, defended their membership of the Freemasons”. Who wouldn’t have a field day with this? The four presenters questioned, prodded, and played with the terminology of the “transgender community”:

Now, according to this article, we are not blokes sitting in a studio we are binaries...so there are five binary people, I don’t know if we can use the word ‘people’, binary things...and there are certain referral words that we can’t use...we can’t use ‘he’ or ‘she’ we have to use the word ‘they’... this is a ruling from the transgender community basically—there is no such thing as male or female, there is everything in between.

So far, they are correct in their reading of the narrative from the sic “transgender community”. Then this exchange occurred:

Presenter 2: “What about ‘it’?”

Presenter 1: “No, you can’t use the word ‘it’...it’s ‘they’—it sounds like a horror film doesn’t it?”

Presenter 2: “Some group of aliens”.

Presenter 1: “We are robot aliens basically, that’s what we are”.

Ofcom also highlights this part of the online discussion where one presenter makes fun of the fact that a person who identifies as “transgender” is also a Freemason, noting that he still holds a man’s name:

And he is going to be a trans activist so I am still not quite sure what he is, because he describes himself...his name is Edward Lord. Well that name is obviously male isn’t it, he’s called Edward. Edward is a male name...Edward Lord sounds like one of the most male names I’ve ever heard of. But he is obviously not sure about whether he is a bloke or not—even with a name like Edward Lord... So there you are, going on about transgender issues and he hasn’t even got a transgender name! Well if he wasn’t transgender it would be half male half female.

It’s worth reading through the entirety of the investigation because much of what was the subject of complaint were the words of presenters debating over the confusion of names and “gender identity” and of a person who claims to hold a postmodern identity while also belonging to one of the oldest organisations renowned for its exclusion of women.

In its decision against the broadcaster on 28 January 2019, Ofcom states:

Ofcom has also had due regard [Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010] in the exercise of its functions to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to foster good relations between those who share a relevant protected characteristic—such as gender reassignment—and those who do not.

Ofcom also weighed in on the fact that Edward Lord, a man, was referred to as “he” and “him”, among other critiques of the show, which spent much of the time discussing the “rules” about which these presenters were clearly confused because the Equality Act 2010 only relates to men inasmuch as they fit within the category of “gender reassignment”.

And this is the kicker in Ofcom’s decision—it jumps the law on what precisely is ostensibly protected under the Equality Act 2010:

We considered that these comments had the potential to cause significant offence as they were insulting, derogatory and sought to ridicule the activist’s non-binary status. In addition, by repeatedly referring to Edward Lord using the incorrect pronoun, the presenters appeared to ignore and undermine the publicly stated gender identity of a trans person.

Ofcom made a ruling about a discussion of a transgender person, Edward Lord, when this man is not even transgender. In reading through Ofcom’s decision, I was as confused by this narrative as the radio presenters discussing Lord, because that is how amorphous gender identity is to reasonable people. This incident is a textbook case as to why personal identities should not be built into “guidance” and “rules” because clearly the rule makers themselves have no clue as to what they are mandating, because transgender, as Ofcom, along with many other British public bodies, are so massively confused over the very definition of “transgender” and all its adjacent categories, that they applied the Equality Act 2010 incorrectly to a man who was not transgender.

It is vital here to note that Ofcom’s reference to the Equality Act 2010 preceded “Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover Limited” (2020), which allegedly provides the inclusion of “gender fluid/non-binary” people within the bracket of “gender reassignment”, despite these nominations being entirely undistinguishable from most people who do not strictly adhere to any “gender binary”. This employment tribunal case pivots on a wedge that has been allowed to be driven between material reality and individual self-perception—sex is real, while gender identity is a personal fantasy. As Maya Forstater notes in her discussion of this case, “what if following this guidance means the court loses sight of reality itself?” observing:

The tribunal’s enthusiasm for playing along with the fantasy meant that it failed to consider the practical dilemma faced by Jaguar Land Rover, namely, where there was a mismatch between Mr Taylor’s self-perception and material reality, what exactly should the company have done to protect him from feeling distress at how others perceived him? What rules should it have communicated to all employees? 

As with the court’s decision in “Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover Limited”, Ofcom’s decision made a similar leap in deciding that Edward Lord, a lawyer who identifies as “non-binary”, could be guaranteed protection for “gender reassignment” despite the fact that he is a man who enjoys all the entitlement of other men, including his membership within the Freemasons that do not allow women. Again, material reality matters in rendering legal opinion because reality is the basis of law, not self-perception or fantasy.

Ofcom similarly investigated an episode of the Q Breakfast Show (9 November 2017) where the two radio hosts, Stephen Clements and Cate Conway, were debating the decision of Topshop to abolish separate changing rooms for men and women. The hosts discussed a news story about a man, Travis Alabanza, who identified as “trans feminine” and who, according to The Sun, complained to the Topshop after being denied access to the women's fitting rooms which resulted in Topshop introducing “gender-fluid changing rooms”. Ofcom’s own rendering of Clements’ and Conway’s discussion regarding this subject made it clear that both presenters were entirely bewildered about the terms “gender neutral” and “trans feminine” while evidencing, in a quite painfully clear fashion, that these presenters were expected to embrace these other terms in the course of their show. In fact, the paradigmatic basis of the complaint is engaging in open debate between the show’s presenters as to what this prescriptive language means in terms of women’s rights, a point that only recently seems to have been gaining widespread attention throughout Great Britain.

Ofcom’s investigation was instigated by this comment made by Clements after introducing a news story about the Topshop having caved to pressure from an activist to make their women-only changing rooms unisex:

It revealed the chain and Topman were now gender neutral after a complaint from a customer. One customer. There is a picture of him, her, him, it, what? Performance artist [name] who identifies himself, identifies her, identifies as trans feminine was wearing a dress and make-up at a Topshop store in Manchester last weekend.

Later in the show, Clements stated, “I used the word ‘it’ by accident earlier. [A listener] has taken great umbrage to this and rightly so. That was an incorrect remark”. One might presume that the problem was resolved with Clements’ apology, despite the arguable point that “it” grammatically is the only gender neutral third-person pronoun in the English language. Instead, Ofcom received a complaint and investigated the show.

It is important to note that while Ofcom’s ruling on the Q Breakfast Show is marked as “resolved”, this nature of the “offence” does not differ so much from the words and ideas discussed in the Sheffield in Focus show. In its decision, Ofcom cited the Communications Act 2003, Section Two of the Code that “requires that generally accepted standards are applied so as to provide adequate protection for members of the public from the inclusion of harmful or offensive material”, adding:

We considered whether the comments made by Stephen Clements, in which he referred to the trans feminine person in the news story as: “him, her, him, it” as well as the comments he made about the suitability for children of gender neutral changing rooms were potentially offensive. Stephen Clements referred to a picture on social media of the person who complained about Topshop, as: “him, her, him, it”. By using the word “it”, he used a pronoun associated with objects rather than people, which had the potential to undermine a person who has a non-binary gender identity.

Ofcom also indicated that the “likely level of offence would have been increased in this case by Stephen Clements’ further statement about the suitability of gender neutral changing rooms for children, specifically that he would not allow his six year-old daughter to change in a gender neutral changing room” wherein Clements stated: “...But I wouldn’t be putting my—100% nobody convinced me of anything different—that my six year-old daughter will be getting changed anywhere where a male biologically or non-biologically would be able to be in the same area as she gets undressed. Wouldn’t be happening”. In what can only be understood as a bad faith argument, Ofcom took Clements’ words and inferred the exact opposite of what Clements meant. Again, reality matters here: Clements recognised this man as man because factually speaking that is what he is.

Instead of ruling on the side of reality, Ofcom’s decision demonstrates that it has thrown reality out of the window in its embrace of a fiction, writing:

In our view, while there was some ambiguity in Stephen Clements’ comments, this reference about the presenter’s daughter could have been understood by listeners as suggesting that the safety of a young child could be compromised if she was in a changing room with a trans person. Ofcom considered this also had the potential to be offensive to the transgender community.

So while Ofcom “considered this matter resolved” this body’s decision still intimates that Clements’ words could be “offensive” because he recognised that a man is a man as he expressed his horror that any male be in a state of undress near children. These sentiments are hardly bigoted and form the very political and social basis around which Nicola Sturgeon has recently fallen from grace. Similar to the ruling in Sheffield in Focus, Ofcom’s own language here, despite their marking this cased as “resolved”, throughout its decision, weighs steadily in favour of ideology and against the fact-based discussions that any journalist or radio presenter would otherwise be expected to undertake.

Ofcom’s own code is conflictive leaving this agency at liberty to decide that Section Two on “Harm and offence” is what merits consideration in their ruling, even though it is entirely at odds with Section Five of its code, “Due impartiality and due accuracy”. There is no attention given to the code of accuracy or freedom of expression within its decision. Ofcom concluded this case as “resolved” in large part because of what it deemed “a lack of awareness” on the part of one of the presenters, stating, “Stephen Clements displayed a lack of awareness of trans issues generally. He sought clarification from his co-presenter about what trans feminine meant”. But this “lack of awareness” is a purely ideological awareness, especially given that science confirms that human sex is dimorphic and immutable.

Ofcom then lists examples of Clements struggling to understand this ideology, more evidence that Clements is simply ill-informed about an ideology: “Trans feminine. Is that what that means?”; “But still biologically a male?” and “This is a minefield isn’t it, a political correct minefield”. There is never once any consideration given to the fact that perhaps Clements was within his right to hold diverse opinions on this subject which would make Ofcom’s framing of Clements’ ignorance of this ideology—his “lack of awareness”—a moot point. By narrating Clements’ “crime” as “lacking awareness”, Ofcom perfectly evaded addressing Clements’ right to hold opposing views.

The case of Sheffield in Focus similarly engaged in lively debate about similar terminology yet was found to be in violation of the rules. Yet, Clements was granted reprieve where Sheffield in Focus was not. Ofcom presents its ruling in Clements’ case leaving his “lack of awareness”—this is in Twitter-speak “get educated”—as a revolving ideological door. Ofcom has frightfully allowed this case to be closed because this agency is engaging in ideological, closed-door refereeing where its ostensible duty to freedom of expression is allowed so long as the admission of guilt is centred by the presenters and licensee and further education undertaken:

We took into account that Stephen Clements went on to apologise on air soon after for the comment in which he referred to the trans feminine person as “it”, and the presenters made clear that the comments had been offensive. We also took into account that the Licensee accepted that Stephen Clements’ comments were in breach of Rule 2.3, and told us it had taken a number of steps as a result of this broadcast including addressing the issue of gender awareness by organising specific training for all staff at the station and a refresher course on the Code to ensure such comments were not repeated. In addition, Stephen Clements had also acknowledged and personally apologised for any offence he had caused.

This part of the decision sent shivers down my spine. Ofcom’s dismissal of this case served as an instructional took, making a public example of Clements who stars as Ofcom’s “reformable” figure. For the woke revolution, Clements becomes that subject who is saved from the guillotine by having made a public apology while showing himself to be someone whose thinking—freedom of expression—just needed a bit of tweaking and educating. While Ofcom’s rule on Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy co-exists stands alongside Section Two: Harm and Offence, reality is unseated in favour of personal, atomised identities.

The third Ofcom case concerns Paul Ellery in the Morning (16 September 2019) where Paul Ellery was found to having been in breach of Ofcom’s Code over a person who never identified as sic “transgender”. Here is what transpired after playing a Sam Smith track during the programme when the presenter, Ellery, muses over Smith’s recent revelation:

I can’t get over this that he [Sam Smith] says he doesn’t identify with being male or female, so in future we have to call him ‘they’. And I heard somebody on—I think it was on BBC News Channel over the weekend—saying, ‘the easiest way to find out, Sam, if you’re male or female or they, is to take your clothes off—there we go you’re definitely a boy!’

Ofcom’s quotes Ellery’s words in its report and then follows this up with a citation from its Rules, Section 2.3:

In applying generally accepted standards broadcasters must ensure that material which may cause offence is justified by the context...Such material may include, but is not limited to, offensive language, violence, sex, sexual violence, humiliation, distress, violation of human dignity, discriminatory treatment or language (for example on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation, and marriage and civil partnership). Appropriate information should also be broadcast where it would assist in avoiding or minimising offence.

Ofcom’s attempt to make out Ellery’s words as “causing offence” is a troubling manoeuvre to enforce ideology, or at the very least to favour ideology over accuracy. In layman’s terms, Ellery was presented with language of gender ideology through mainstream media when days earlier Sam Smith announced that he had begun to identify as sic “non-binary” in September 2019. Ellery challenged quite directly the very notion of “non-binary” and its relationship to the body and somatic sex. His questions were hardly offensive since he swiftly made clear that his argument was simply that nobody can escape their sex. Ellery’s comments were distinctly about sex, not gender. Moreover, Ellery was specifically noting what so many feminists involved in this struggle also recognise: that sex is immutable no matter one’s dress or pronouns. Ellery contested Smith’s request to be referred to through the third-person plural—they—and exercised his freedom of expression. Unbeknownst to Ellery, by his having ventured into the verboten terrain of biology, it was practically guaranteed that a complaint would be lodged against him for having discussed the reality of human biology and not for having made an offensive comment that was never factually determined by Ofcom.

In its decision, Ofcom attempted to mitigate any criticism that it was curtailing “the audience’s and the broadcaster’s right to freedom of expression set out in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights” by stating that it must consider “whether a broadcaster has provided listeners with adequate protection from offensive material in a programme”. More to the point, Ofcom is enforcing an ideology that is steeped in ultra-atomising fictions of selfhood where its bar for “offence” is so low that Paul Ellery’s words—patently logical and non-offensive—could only be read as “offensive” if the ideological baggage of gender ideology was taken as a preordained fact by Ofcom. 

Like its other rulings on the shows that were found to be in breach of the Code, Ofcom’s ruling against Paul Ellery in the Morning seems to be a purely ideological decision. There is more to ask about this specific case since Sam Smith is one of many men with a special identity who does not even fall under the Equality Act 2010. Being recognised as “non-binary” or any number of the other “umbrella terms” that some say are covered by the “transgender” nomenclature is not borne out in law.

Daisy Parker of Ofcom responded to my query. Even though she failed to address most of my specific queries, she sent this as an explanation of the broader scope of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code:

Our Broadcasting Code contains the rules all Ofcom licensed broadcasters are required to comply with in their programmes. The Code and the way Ofcom applies it takes account of the rights of broadcasters and audiences to freedom of expression. In line with this, we do not take a blanket approach to particular topics, issues or programme types. It is also important to note that our rules do not prevent the broadcast of content that may be offensive or controversial. There is editorial freedom for each broadcaster to decide how it covers any issue or topic, including those relating to transgender people. To help inform our approach on generally accepted standards which of course change and evolve over time, we conduct regular research into audience attitudes. Ipsos MORI produced a report on audience attitudes to offensive language for us in 2021 which includes a section on misgendering and deadnaming.

The response Parker offered me read along the same ambiguous lines of the IPSO and NUJ “guidance”, only this organisation uses the terms “code” and “rules”—words that carry a heavier weight than “guidance” or “guidelines”. Parker conveyed that Ofcom’s rules do not “prevent the broadcast of content that may be offensive or controversial” while also noting that broadcasters are “required to comply” with rules for which there is no “blanket approach” to certain topics. Parker’s response sets up a very wide berth for freedom of expression which begs the question as to why the word “rule” is used if, as Parker tells me, broadcasters can be “controversial” and even “offensive”. Isn’t the word “rule” pretty unambiguous to mean something that is not optional?

Parker’s above response also puts forth several sets of contradictory notions surrounding broadcast media’s coverage of gender to include those who identify as “transgender” and other adjacent identities: that there are “rules” yet they are optional, hence not really rules. Ofcom, I believe, purposefully blurs its commitment to free speech by leaning hard on its rules on offence while discarding Article 10 entirely where gender is concerned.

A demonstration in support of press freedom in Berlin during a 2015 treason investigation of two writers from Netzpolitik who had published domestic security documents regarding Germany’s plans to increase its surveillance of online communications. Photo credit: Britta Pedersen

How can a journalist navigate the “Ofcom Broadcasting Code” since we are beholden to impartiality and accuracy (Section Five of the Code) as well as to observe Section Two of Code which covers “harm and offence”? These two ideals are in direct contradiction with each other, especially given Ofcom’s claim to protect freedom of expression. Clearly, from the three cases I mention above, the freedom of expression—to include radio hosts debating these very rules on air—is truncated in order to appease a specific population with an extremely subjective identity that has taken hold of every public and private institution in most of the English-speaking world. As a journalist, I wanted answers.

So far, what I have learned is that these agencies’ guidelines and rules do not prevent controversial or offensive content, yet Ofcom relies upon Ipsos (formerly Ipsos MORI) for guidance on what is considered “offensive” among a public that has been mediatically schooled as to “what is offensive” by the very media that has created special segments informing the public as to “misgendering”, fake pronouns, and “how-to” episodes for speaking about this particular demographic. There are serious ethical issues if we are to take polling cues from media relations companies that are likewise invested in propagating an ideology based on a fiction, a self-perception at best.

Where are Ofcom’s rules about reporting on people who identify as furries, otherkin, or transabled? The short answer is that these other make-believe identities do not appear within media guidelines because these groups do not have the economic resources and infrastructural support within the managerial class to lobby media bodies even though these identities are withal based upon delusional, atomised self-regard and all have zero grounding in reality. Journalism is faced with an ethical problem when fictions are imposed upon news reporting because of the proscription of objective coverage around this particular niche subject and its actors.

In its 2021 Summary Report, “Public attitudes towards offensive language on TV and Radio”, Ipsos lays out its study with the claim: “This report provides an updated picture of attitudes to offensive language, building on previous research commissioned by Ofcom in 2016. It also examines attitudes to other types of potentially offensive content, namely blackface, mimicking of accents, misgendering, and deadnaming”. Yet the language used within the study prejudices its findings throughout where gender ideology is concerned.

Take for instance the section “Misgendering and deadnaming” which claims, “Accidental misgendering was typically seen as something that can happen but should not be normalised on TV and radio”. Who decided that “misgendering” is something that “should not be normalised”? That using correct pronouns for anyone could be ever considered “accidental”? Or, that it is even action that ought to be controlled and surveilled? Where are these messages coming from that “gendering” (as opposed to misgendering) is part of the mandate of media companies? Moreover, these terms—“misgendering” and “deadnaming”—automatically instruct the survey respondents how to respond. The negative parts of these new “sins” are built into the words, indicating that these are “wrong” actions ( emotive use of mis- and dead-). Similarly, the public’s interpretation of Ofcom’s report in formulating its “rules” is led easily to believe that this research is representative of public attitudes, as per the study’s title. This is, I would later learn, not the case.

Reading further into the research Ofcom commissioned from this agency, I was troubled by what appears to be, on the one hand, a qualitative study of “public attitudes towards offensive language” while on the other, there is a clear curation of what is mandated as “offensive language”. For instance, “misgendering and deadnaming” is mentioned in the same section as “blackface” and “mimicking accents”. How strange that nobody at Ipsos might have investigated “womanface” that incorporates some of the most offensive stereotypes being spun by this and other bodies as the new holy grail!

I learned that the section on gender ideology within Ipsos’ report was informed through qualitative research consisting of “37 online discussion groups and 25 depth interviews involving participants from a variety of locations and backgrounds” between 15 February and 6 May 2021. I wrote Ipsos asking why their report contains zero mention of any respondents who objected to calling men “women” or “she”. Most bizarre of all is that nowhere in the report has Ipsos defined “gender identity”. This is odd given that this section of the report was composed of the following groups, many of whom would simply not have a cursory knowledge of this ideology, aside from the fact that legacy media throughout the UK has been training the public on this subject:

•One pilot and 15 focus groups took place with members of the general public, split by location, age and socioeconomic status (“general groups”).

• 21 focus groups were conducted with participants from minority communities: Black African (x2); Black Caribbean (x2); Bangladeshi (x3); Pakistani (x3); Indian (x3)[1]; Chinese (x2); Jewish (x2); and lesbian, gay & bisexual (x4).

• Online depth interviews were conducted with trans participants (x5); and non-binary participants (x5).

• Online depth interviews were conducted with participants with physical or mental disabilities (x5).

• Telephone depth interviews were also conducted with 10 individuals: participants from Traveller communities (x5); and participants aged 66-85 without access to the internet (x5).

Aside from the absence of thoughtful interrogation concerning what is a purely ideological narrative, the prescriptive nature of language surrounding gender identity presented in this research is never flagged up as potentially a violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression). Freedom of expression comes up five times within the report: “The importance of protecting freedom of expression was acknowledged” and “Consistent with rights to freedom of expression, broadcasters can include material in their programmes that is potentially offensive but, to stay within our rules, they must make sure they provide sufficient context and adequate protection to audiences”. In these two instances there is a nod to Article 10 but never is the freedom of expression poised against the gender ideology, a quasi-religious discourse. Instead of querying this religious doxa, Ipsos projects an obligatory mirroring of personal fantasy through language throughout the report while omitting any pushback to this perceived obligation.

I asked Ipsos why we see no mention of those who decry the prescribed language of “gender” within the media. Ipsos responded writing:

Unlike quantitative surveys, qualitative research is not designed to provide statistically reliable data. It is illustrative and exploratory rather than statistically reliable and based on perceptions, which are realities to those that hold them. Verbatim comments from the interviews and focus groups led by Ipsos UK were included within the report. These should not be interpreted as defining the views of all participants, nor all UK adults but have been selected to provide insight into a particular issue or topic expressed at a particular point in time. The section you have highlighted on misgendering and deadnaming is just one element of a much broader study covering language across TV and radio in areas such as race and ethnicity, religious and political references, swear words and many more subjects and should also be considered within this context.

So, the section on gender ideology within a report entitled “Public attitudes towards offensive language on TV and Radio” was entirely “illustrative and exploratory rather than statistically reliable” such that any dissenting views have been curated out of sight, eliminated from public view, as Ipsos tells me that this report is not definitive nor inclusive of all the feedback from this study. Ipsos also informed me that what it published in the study was “selected” despite the fact that Ipsos unabashedly juxtaposed “blackface” with “misgendering and deadnaming”. The former presents a prohibition against regressive racists recitals while the latter encourages the subject to embrace regressive, misogynist performances. More disturbing, why is Ofcom taking its policy markers from a study that has been curated into ideological capture?

Ofcom had been part of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme until 2021. My previous investigations into Stonewall have led me to uncover how their policies and training of companies or public institutions have led to this kind of ideological hold that almost magically and automatically becomes translated from Stonewall’s programme to institutional mandates and is added onto human resources training within both private and public sectors. When I asked Parker of the links between Ofcom and Stonewall she wrote me, “Stonewall's advice, and our membership of its Equality Index, never had any impact on our regulatory decisions. We recognised that our membership of the Diversity Champions programme risked a perceived conflict of interest, and we stepped back from the scheme”. This response is a bit misleading since the public outcry over public institutions that partook in Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme was never about public perception. The criticism of agencies that took part in Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme was directed in clear terms of institutions that embraced an ideology that was the direct result of backdoor meetings with NGOs, and the buying into schemes of one sort or another while never running consultations about the ideology which these organisations were directly or indirectly supporting and for which they received ideological training. In short, why has any government agency a hand in policing what is philosophical belief?

As the above cases demonstrate, Ofcom oversees the widespread dispersion of gender ideology within the media in order to subvert the freedom of expression to those parties claiming offence regarding their gender beliefs. And let’s be clear that what is considered offensive is not a call for extermination or violence, something most reasonable people would agree should be sanctioned. Ofcom is undertaking a type of ideological protectionism of the gender lobby, its adherents, and the ever-changing ideology. We are in the throes of witnessing a public sector embrace of feelings contrary to scientific, historic and logical facts, in direct violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I asked Ofcom why it has entered the business of censuring debate, disciplining fact-based discussion on gender identity and ultimately protecting feelings over fact in these three cases? They did not answer this or many other of my questions.

It is painfully clear that Ofcom, IPSO, and the NUJ have set out to propagandise identity within media while censoring public debate on this issue through investigations and through a flimsily constructed narrative of “guidelines” that are far from legally binding. All this while betraying each organisation’s ostensible allegiance to factual reporting within journalism and media programmes. There is a clear contradiction on the issue of gender where these agencies specifically buttress personal fictions and belief systems to the detriment of the freedom of the press. The collateral damage is that today journalists and presenters are clearly feeling the pressure to parrot an anti-science ideology for fear of losing their employment or being sanctioned.

I recommend my fellow journalists read the guidance, “Media handbook on sex and gender” (2022), published by Sex Matters as it is clear on all aspects of the law, to include noting that “misgendering” is simply not against the law: “There are no laws that require people to use particular pronouns for people or to describe male people as women or female people as men”. The particularly thorny issue of “non-binary” identity comes up in this handbook where the definition is laid out plainly:

This adjective is used for people who do not identify as either men or women (or sometimes as either male or female). Non-binary people include people who present as typical members of their sex; people who pick and mix from both sexes’ stereotypical presentations; and people who take hormones or undergo surgery in order to present with a combination of secondary sex characteristics (such as a bearded man who takes oestrogen in order to develop breasts).

This is particularly interesting in light of “Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover Limited” (2020) since these umbrella terms such as “non-binary”, “gender fluid”, “agender”, and “gender non-conforming” often end up in confusion. These terms certainly wrought misunderstanding for Ofcom and the Employment Tribunal in the Jaguar case.

There are other facets of the Jaguar case which Maya Forstater addresses in her coverage of this decision, noting how nothing decided in this case departs from the Equality Act 2010. What is most fascinating about this analysis is Forstater’s observation of how the court system is particularly keen on being viewed as progressive despite its abandonment of reality: “The tribunal seemed particularly keen on inhabiting the role of landmark decision-makers, going into a soliloquy about individuals who make a difference including Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Ruth Bader-Ginsberg (‘The Notorious RBG’, as they noted)”. Forstater saliently links this case to what has gone on with the redrafting of The Equal Treatment Benchbook, which guides judges’ conduct to include directing everyone in the courtroom setting to use “appropriate terms of address, names and pronouns”. Forstater queries, “But what if following this guidance means the court loses sight of reality itself?”

I spoke with Naomi Cunningham, a barrister at Outer Temple Chambers who specialises in employment and discrimination law. Referring to “Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover Limited” (2020), Cunningham notes how this judgment has been widely misreported as if it were a precedent-setting, game-changing case because the subject at the centre of the case identified as “non-binary”. Cunningham explains that the case does not set a legal precedent because it was a first instance employment tribunal judgment, not an appeal; and because the claimant’s own evidence made it clear that he had the protected characteristic of gender reassignment on a perfectly conventional understanding of the law.

I asked ask Cunningham why the notion that “one must not misgender” is so pervasive within the media today. She gives a quite comprehensive answer:

There’s a widespread myth that the Gender Recognition Act somehow creates a right not to be “misgendered”. Acts of Parliament can do lots of different kinds of things. They can tell you what you cannot do, and that you will be punished if you do. They can create organisations like the EHRC or local authorities, and they can confer powers on people and organisations. They can create or adjust civil causes of action like defamation or discrimination. They can also can make rules about how you interpret other acts of parliament, such as the Interpretation Act 1978. Fundamentally, the GRA is a kind of Interpretation Act. It does create one kind of criminal offence around the disclosure of protected information, but that’s ancillary to its main task. It doesn’t say that if someone “misgenders” you then you can sue them. Its core task is deeming. The GRA does not hand out rights, it just deems some men to be “women” and some women to be “men” for the purposes of any other laws that attach consequences to whether you are male or female. But that doesn’t do very much, because the default position in the law is that it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman—it’s prohibited to treat people differently on grounds of their sex. So the idea that a GRC gives you the right to be treated as if you’re the opposite sex is a fundamentally important misunderstanding of what the GRA does. If Eddie Izzard had a GRC, it wouldn’t require me to think or speak of Eddie Izzard as a “woman” or to call him “she”.

I still questioned why this information is not readily understandable or exercised by private and public bodies. To wit, why have Ofcom, IPSO, and the NUJ posited their guidance and rules within a terrain fraught with misinterpretation and where lobby groups like Stonewall and Gendered Intelligence have spent years training organisations about how to refer to people who identify as “transgender”. Where is the weight on the law regarding my ability as a journalist to call a man in a dress “a man” and “he”? When should I begin to worry?

Peter Daly, a partner at London law firm Doyle Clayton, spoke to me about the Jaguar case noting, “Although some lawyers disagree with me, I think Section 7 of the EA probably does protect those who are non-binary”. Daly goes on to explain how the Equality Act 2010 works: “Section 7 relates to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. But another of the protected characteristics is religion and belief, and that’s where this debate is taking place. This is not a disagreement between gender-critical people and those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but between people with two different philosophical beliefs: gender-critical beliefs and gender identity beliefs. Both of these two opposing beliefs are protected, and that is where this debate should be held: how do we accommodate two opposing beliefs?”

He goes on to point out that Ofcom and IPSO has what is called a “public sector equality duty” which can be found in Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010:

Public sector equality duty

1. A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to—

 a) eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act;

 b) advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it;

 c) foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.

Daly explains how public authorities must have the “due regard referred to in s.149(1)(b) and (c) and cannot simply choose their champion of the two protected beliefs. A public authority cannot choose one dog in this fight any more than it would choose one religion over another where they have opposing doctrines”. He elaborates the polemic further: 

An authority which looks at this debate purely through the prism of Section 7 is completely confused. As well as section 7, they need to have due regard to Section 10 which covers two opposing beliefs. For example, it does not follow that because someone who believes in gender identity theory—that gender overrides sex, the pronouns follow gender, that human beings can change sex—is someone with a Section 7 protected characteristic. You can hold those beliefs, and have no intention of ever transitioning. Equally, you can hold gender-critical beliefs and be trans, and therefore have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. Section 7 is really a red herring here.

Where public authorities advance a gender identity belief viewpoint, they invariably do so in the name of trans rights. But really, it’s done in furtherance of gender identity beliefs. There’s nothing per se wrong in this, because gender identity beliefs are protected. But so are gender critical beliefs. And an authority who priorities one set of protected beliefs over another with the effect of causing unfavourable treatment to holders of the oppressed belief is not complying with its s.149 obligations. It’s difficult for public authorities, because this is a topic in which not everyone agrees. You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t, and you are going to offend one side or the other. But the fact that offence may be taken underlines the importance of complying with legal obligations to advance equality of opportunity between groups of different protected characteristics.

Daly analyses what is currently happening around gender ideology where there is a quasi-religious belief held by those who propound gender ideology to the objection of many who refuse their belief. All of this is covered in Section 10 of the Equality Act 2010 which states:

1. Religion means any religion and a reference to religion includes a reference to a lack of religion.

2. Belief means any religious or philosophical belief and a reference to belief includes a reference to a lack of belief.

Hence, while religious and philosophical beliefs are protected by the Equality Act 2010, so too is the lack of belief protected. “Forstater established that gender identity beliefs are covered by the protected characteristic of religion and belief, just as Maya’s own, opposing gender-critical belief is covered”, Daly clarifies, “It is also unlawful to discriminate against someone for an absence of a belief, so you don’t even need to have a gender-critical or a gender identity belief: if you are discriminated against because you don’t hold one of those beliefs, that too is unlawful”.

“If you are an authority which is taking a positive position in respect of a religion or belief”, Daly adds, “you need to understand that you are at risk of effectively proselytising for that belief. That is not the role of public authorities”. Daly emphasises that beliefs are and should be protected but that “those protections are a shield, not a sword. You can’t impose that belief on the public, or prevent people who dissent from that belief from expressing their dissent”.

Daly claims that while these are all relatively well-established principles of equality and discrimination law, the way in which gender identity beliefs manifest among some of those who hold them is a departure from what has gone before, stating:

There is a unique aspect of perceived morality in play here—it’s almost religious. It says that everyone who doesn’t hold gender identity beliefs is so morally wrong that they are almost the equivalent of an apostate. Because those apostates are so morally abhorrent, holders of gender identity beliefs are entitled—even required—to pursue those supposed apostates to an extent which otherwise would be completely unacceptable. This is the core of the “cancel culture” that surrounds this issue. You can’t challenge the opposing belief, because this requires the acknowledgment of the tenets of that opposing belief, which is deemed to be legitimising it—hence the term “no debate”. So all that is left is to attack the individual who resiles from gender identity beliefs, rather than engage with the substance of what they do or don’t believe. This is how you end up with people losing jobs and livelihoods and so on; those penalties are aimed specifically at the person, not what they believe in.

This is not a bug of this system, it’s a feature. It spirals, because the more apostates you identify and the harsher you treat them, the more morally pure you are deemed by the system. It’s a purity spiral comparable to an inquisition. This has an effect on bystanders—the severe penalties serve to “encourager les autres” which means that people who aren’t engaged with the debate avoid it, remain mute, or take the side of inquisitors lest they find themselves labelled as apostates. Because, ultimately, everyone sees themselves as morally motivated. So, if this is the moral crusade of our times, then there is an inherent temptation for people to become engaged on what they perceive to be the moral side. In a situation where there is no discussion of the contours of this debate, even attempting to discuss it is evidence in itself of apostasy. So, it’s no surprise that people reach imbalanced views on what the debate is about.

This underlines why it’s so essential that public authorities with responsibility for overseeing the media do not become partisan to one side or the other: it is only through a balanced public debate that a route through this situation can be found.

I ask Daly if courts seem to be conferring decisions towards ideology and against material reality and he answers, “In what I have seen, which is by no means a perfect overview, there is some evidence to show courts moving towards ideology over material reality. But in the appellate courts that is not so much the case, and they seem to be relatively immune”. 

This problem is pervasive throughout the English-speaking media. Three weeks ago this story hit the US media: “Arkansas woman arrested, accused of making bomb threats in Oxford”. Upon seeing the photo of the “woman” attached to the story, it becomes immediately clear that it was a man who made the bomb threats, not a woman. This is one of many stories in the media today that demonstrate how journalists toe the line on gender ideology to the confusion of readers. There are even more linguistic gymnastics where journalists avoid saying “man” and instead opt for “male-born”, “assigned male at birth”, and “biologically male” (as if maleness were anything but biological). Legacy media has been battling a mounting problem of a public whose trust in the media remains at one of its lowest points in the US, with trust in the media also falling in the UK to a lesser severity. That said, legacy media’s promotion of gender ideology has added to the distrust.

As I queried fellow journalists and editors about their reporting through the screen of gender ideology, I have spoken to many more journalists who feel pressured into using terminology that has been foisted upon them. Often times, these journalists cave to the pressure lest they lose their livelihoods.

Media today is replete with myriad misrepresentations of men who rape being described as “women”, “trans women”, and being referred to as “she/her”, in addition to the never-ending made-up pronouns. Today’s media is replete with such stories that spin fake news where gender identity is concerned. It’s not even the fact that there is sufficient data already available demonstrating the number of men who “identify as” in order to gain access to women within the prison system given, as research shows, men who “changed” their sic “gender” to female in jail are switching back to their birth gender after release.

There is an overwhelming frustration on behalf of journalists concerning this topic. Andreia Nobre, a Brazilian journalist based in Belgium, writes for 4W and she reports:

As a journalist who has been battling for years for better reporting on male violence towards women while seeking to end victim-blaming, using female pronouns to refer to men who self-declare as trans is bad reporting. Just like the phrase “gender violence”, which “erases” the perpetrator and the victim, using female pronouns to refer to male offenders who self-declare as “trans” misleads the public, attributing to women, as a sex, crimes that were committed by men. As a result, the general public is deceived by inaccurate statistics about male violence against women while male offenders, such as Karen White, are granted permission to be housed in women's prisons. The guidelines recommending the use of preferred pronouns to refer to people who self-declare as “trans”, or to call men “trans women”, and women “trans men”, encourages bad journalism, because it misleads the public. It's basically “fake news” to refer to men as “women”. Human beings do not change sex. Journalists are supposed to report on facts. Biological facts are not exempt. The sex of perpetrators and victims is of crucial importance to fight against male violence towards women.

Throughout Nobre’s 20-year career as a journalist, ten of them covering women’s issues, she views journalistic integrity in fact-based reporting as inextricably linked to the advancement of human rights for women. She explains how deeply-ingrained gender ideology has become within Brazilian media, referring to her time at the now defunct Brasil Post, the Brazilian version of the HuffPost. Having written for the Brasil Post from 2015, it was around 2017 when Nobre’s articles were rejected for “not being inclusive” of men who self-declare as “trans”. She was then able to find another journalistic home for her coverage of women's issues, but not without controversy over the fact-based language employed in her writing:

I was asked to write for a feminist publication around that time, but it didn’t take long for my articles to be rejected for refusing to refer to women and girls as “cis”. One of my articles submitted in June 2017 was edited to include the term “cis” and paragraphs talking about female anatomy were deleted. I objected to this editing and my article was not published. From that day on, the website didn't accept my articles anymore.

Nobre has experienced first-hand the pernicious forms of de-platforming that affect journalists within media and news publications. Even outside the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, journalists like Nobre have lost employment opportunities, which is a particularly sadistic form of punishment employed by many editors. Nobre started publishing again about the bullying of women by trans activists for QG Feminista in 2017 and firmly stands by the journalistic imperative to cover the issues outside of ideology, refusing every step of the way to use deceptive, prescriptive language.

I asked Angel Nduka-Nwosu, a journalist based in Lagos, her views on this subject and she most perfectly frames the issue within a historical perspective of women’s rights:

The main issue I have with the insistence on calling men “she” is that it is a deliberate attempt to ignore the material fact of being male or female. It's almost like saying being a man or woman isn’t real and if being a man or woman isn’t real and can simply be identified into, then the majority of the things we fight for as feminists, such as sex segregated bathrooms, are not needed.

Nduka-Nwosu echoes the frustrations of many women who underscore that gender simply doesn’t cancel the sex-based reality of women: “It's so insidious to me generally because although I'm an African woman and generally African languages like Igbo (which is my ethnicity) don't have gendered pronouns, we still know who is male or female and women still face discrimination”. Nduka-Nwosu speaks of the mandate of journalists when covering the stories of women to include the experiences of marginalised and black women, “It is not pushing the idea that men and male people are women and as such must be included in the feminist movement”, adding:

In reporting women's stories, it is important that feminist media ensures that words and women's experiences are accurately told. We cannot have a media that says that it is okay to label women as “birthing bodies” in the name of “inclusion”. Honestly, I try to pay no attention to all of this ridiculousness because in the Nigeria I live in, no one asks what your preferred pronouns are before you encounter severe market harassment and even before baby girls undergo female genital mutilation. Sex is a very real concept for those of us living in African countries. It’s too real for us to ignore and ideally our sisters in Western countries don't have it easy too and they should fight this new brainwashing.

Where Nduka-Nwosu views the various fronts of sex-based oppression from Nigeria to the west, she addresses the western battlefield which insidiously makes women simultaneous subjects and objects of their own oppression.

British independent journalist and broadcaster, Sonia Poulton, chimes in on this polemic within the field of journalism:

Our job as journalists is to report facts. When I see men referred to as “her” or “she” in articles I am immediately aware that we are not dealing with journalism but public relations. It is wrong reporting. Whatever the context: sport, public office, etc. this type of coverage either erases women from public life or makes us responsible for wrongs that are not ours. I find this practice particularly egregious when the reporting concerns violent or sexual crimes.

To the reader, it undermines the seriousness of the charge by making light of the biological sex of the accused. It's a distraction from what the man has been accused or convicted of. And, just as troubling, it also fails to name the problem: violent men. Using incorrect pronouns in media reporting is a consequence of ideological pressure and spineless editorial. This type of reporting is a complete betrayal of the reader and the antithesis of journalism. I will not do it.

There are larger legal uncertainties as to why a rapist would be cast as a “woman” in any such media report since in UK law, rape is specifically restricted to penetration with a penis. There are many questions still to be answered such as those that the NUJ, IPSO and Ofcom ignored from my press query: Why did these organisations not consult women about instituting their “guidance” and “rules” given the demonstrable dangers of this ideology already inflicted upon largely women and children, in addition to the pervasive societal capture where any debate is regarded as sacrilege? Why did these bodies receive guidance from and rely upon astroturfed lobby groups that often provided inaccurate information? Why did these media establishments fail to hold a public consultation among journalists around an ideological machinery that has created, and will continue to create, enormous ideological pressure to regurgitate what is nothing more than a religious credo entirely grounded in the stereotypical symbolism of old-word homophobia and misogyny?

Where the media today is still parroting alleged threats of suicide and murder by this activist community in order to emotionally coerce journalists and the public into parroting ideological hokum, the media and its overseeing bodies and unions must protect the journalistic ethos of truth and accuracy in reporting. Personal fantasy should have no place in journalism nor in the inevitable translation of journalism to history books. We must band together today with our fellow journalists in demanding that media outlets, papers, broadcast channels, editors, and producers stop no-platforming and punishing journalists and presenters who refuse to curry favour with the managerial class that advances the careers of those who engage in ideological propaganda.

The duty to accuracy within journalism has been trashed over the past decade by the likes of the HuffPost and BuzzFeed, two of myriad publications which have made hundreds of millions of dollars by selling fake news written by a mostly unpaid class of bloggers. Like Nobre, I also left the HuffPost when I had one article after another rejected for failure to restate absolute nonsense about men who “identify as”. Our departure changed nothing, however, as there were swathes of bloggers waiting to take our place, eager to get their name on the masthead of a publication with little journalistic integrity. All this, of course, was the self-fulfilling prophecy of such media outlets that had spent years de-professionalising and destroying the field of journalism in order to turn news stories into clickbait.

Whether it is Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights or the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the ever-changing “guidance” of the AP, NUJ, IPSO and Ofcom must be challenged. The UK bodies have overstepped their legal authority while misinterpreting the Equality Act 2010. This is in addition to the massive political machinery that traffics in ideological programmes carried out by charities and NGOs that have entered into private and public bodies through the managerial class invested in “educating” staff on new “guidance” which is often not factually correct, as many of Stonewall’s Champions adherents discovered. There is a huge swathe of charities and NGOs within the UK that have been working behind the scenes to upend democratic freedoms through propagating and dovetailing damaging ideologies into public policy and law. Outside the UK, bodies like the AP and AAP must also stand by journalistic commitments to accuracy and truth, instead of pretending that by lying in our journalism we are saving “trans lives”.

The result of the decades-long astroturfing of public institutions today by institutions representing the gender lobby is that many journalists falsely believe that they must echo a counter-factual ideology, inserting this into their reporting, lest they lose their employment. Many publications and broadcast media similarly feel that they must adhere to the parroting of a religious belief while interjecting every so often the value of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Even IPSO’s plan published yesterday, “To protect the public and freedom of expression”, covering the years 2023 to 2028, trumpets this organisation’s desire to “become an ever more inclusive organisation that is open, accessible and fair”. But inclusive and fair to whom, given that this same organisation commissions a highly-curated study from a company that specialises in market research and public opinion?

Words that twenty years ago soothed the liberal soul—“inclusive” and “fair”—today sound as sirens to the increasing ideological pruning taking place within our societies. How have we allowed backdoor deals to be made between the members of the neoliberal managerial class such that doublespeak rules our society with the fear of immediate social disappearance, on the one hand, and where the rules are so amorphous that everyone is afraid to speak for fear of not being “updated” on the latest DIY pronouns, on the other.

IPSO published its “Public Consultation on Guidance on Reporting of Sex and Gender Identity” which is open until 10 March. I advise everyone—especially every single news journalist, videographer, editor, and producer—to take part in this consultation. The only way to ensure fact-based journalism is that we insist that broadcast media as well as print and web-based journalism adhere to material reality in its coverage of the news—all of the news.

The public bodies that make occasional references to freedom of expression as they commission studies and misrepresent our freedom of expression are no friends to democracy. Their theatrical genuflection to the wholesale exchange of truth for ideology before the altar of neoliberalism is creating social and political chaos. As the ever-expanding managerial class recognises the importance of speaking from both sides of its mouth in order to keep subscriptions rolling in and their contracts renewed, the biggest victim of gender ideology within journalism today is the truth.