BBC respond to my complaint re the C word

[pennydrew]

I complained about an article using the term starting with ‘c’ that is happily not allowed on Mumsnet. This is their response:

Thank you for getting in touch about our article reporting that campaigners opposed to a council motion about Liverpool's transgender community have been accused of "intimidation" and "abuse" by the city's mayor (www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-45589563).

We amended this sentence to now simply refer to “women” because “c**gender women” may not be widely understood by readers.

Thank you once again for getting in touch.

Kind Regards

BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

I suppose you could suggest that if they think people don't understand the word 'woman' any more they could simply clarify it by reference to the dictionary - thusly :

' The motion, which proposed treating all transwomen the same as women (adult human females) ...'

Gosh if they would decide to use female or something, that would be OK, but literally they would run it past Helen Belcher first.

I too am happy to escalate things. I tend to be underestimated in that regard. Had a wealthy landlady who really thought she’d get away with renting our family a house with a fucked up heating system ( 10C in bedrooms in winter ) and a broken down boiler... tried her best to get away with it and abuse me for months on end. Ended up with 2 environmental health hazard warnings and had to pay me compensation and thousands in penalties for not protecting our deposit. I did all that, court case and all, with no legal training and when extremely ill.

I will fight this bullshit until my last breath. I’m a woman. I won’t be renamed.

@Charliethefeminist - when they start to mess with my dictionary definitions they have GONE TOO FAR. Was on the bus on the way home drafting furious but succinct dot points in my head. Hell hath no fury like a woman whose dictionary definition is under threat.

@ErrolTheDragon - I'm seriously flipping fuming. If anything its the poor intellectual logic of it.

To the keyboard!

oh sorry and also @pennydrew - frankly you sound much scarier than me. Respect. I shall be following along behind with my dot points rest assured.

Your guys are taking this next level. I am loving your work!

I find 'cis' a far more offensive word than 'cunt'. Ooh it makes my blood boil when I hear it!

*You guys, I meant to say!

(Though if you do have people to delegate this to.. even more awesome)

The BBC showed its bias.

Only those who accept and believe that TWAW and TMAM use the C word.

I don't expect the BBC to show it's political bias towards one side of a political campaign during the government's consultation on the GRA.

Self ID is written into its reporting guidelines, since about 2014

Good point about the BBC guidelines @Charliethe...

I think this incident tells us a lot about bias in the BBC and why they should not be able to plead that they were following those outdated guidelines:

The BBC is used to updating its descriptions for people. A good example would be the term 'people of colour'. Someone somewhere updated the former name for some reason - it was loaded, it was offensive and/or it excluded particular people.

In the same way, the cis thing has become politically loaded and offensive. The fact that the BBC hasn't been able to get their collective heads around this tells us something about inbuilt bias.

Do you have a link to those reporting guidelines on self ID please @Charlie? I can't find anything from a search. Thanks.

it's under G for gender I think

Says bbc journos have to call people whatever they want to be called ie whatever they identify as

Worth a mooch round bbc academy - you can see all the editorial guidelines, it's all public

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/impartiality&ved=2ahUKEwj30MDF0_LdAhXlK8AKHZ5rDGsQFjABegQICxAG&usg=AOvVaw1xoVa8YDPTuP4QpGxmz9m0&cshid=1538857687207" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">BBC rules on imoartiality

Don't bust a gut laughing now will you

Oh excellent thanks for the guidelines!

I can't wait to quote these in my next round of escalation....

"the class of people who were previously described as women"

"women who are not transgender"

It's actually quite frightening.

The impartiality link didn't work for me.

Says bbc journos have to call people whatever they want to be called

Good. Just call women 'women' then, if you please BBC.

Well I told them what I wanted to be called and hey ignored me. Can I take them to court? Get a warning from the police? Ffs

They're hopeless. Male senior managers on so much money, and with so little integrity.

I have extensive expertise in irritating male senior managers by saying what I mean (direct quote from performance review feedback once - my feedback was literally that it was a problem that I said what I thought instead of what I thought senior male managers wanted to hear).

I'm quite looking forward to giving some male senior managers who are on unjustifiable salaries quite a few headaches.

There is more than one way to fight a war. If I make some overpaid male media types have to drink a whole bottle of red when they finally get home a few nights and feel bloated and seedy in the morning I shall consider that a minor skirmish well won.

Fuckers.

It's not correct to think the senior news managers in BBC News are male.
Fran Unsworth has been head of news for the corporation since last December and many of the editors and journalists are female. They are all bound by the BBC's obligations to be impartial. But, clearly they don't all seem to be aware of that.
Unsworth complaining about press freedom after the Cliff Richard ruling makes me wonder about her judgement.

True: I am thinking of David Jordan, who oversees the Editorial Guidelines, and the male majority.

There we are, assuming their 'genders'. Whatever next.

Latest response from the Beeb.

"Thank you for getting in touch again about our article reporting that campaigners opposed to a council motion about Liverpool's transgender community have been accused of "intimidation" and "abuse" by the city's mayor (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-455895633_).

We’re sorry for any confusion arising from the wording of our previous response.
However we do not agree that there’s a problem with the change we’ve made in the context of the piece.

If you remain dissatisfied you can contact the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) explaining why you believe there may have been a potential breach of standards or other potentially significant issue to investigate further."

Wankers