Actions to take on This Never Happens sex offending reporting

[Sunkisses]

Apologies if this has been suggested before (I work full time, have young kids and cannot get on here as much as I'd like), but I constantly get so enraged when I read any This Never Happens posts about sex offenders claiming to be 'women', and then getting the police, the courts, the CPS and journalists falling over themselves calling them 'she' and 'Ms', and these male sexual crimes being recorded as 'female'. I always like turning rage into activism, or it can feel really debilitating and disempowering.

Can we scribble down here ideas for challenging this BS, to support the brilliant Fair Play for Women complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) complaint?

1. Write directly to the journalist concerned/the Editor of the newspaper to complain at attributing male sex crimes to women.

1. Write to IPSO to complain

1. Write to the CPS/courts to complain

1. Write to the police and ask whether the sex offender's crimes were recorded as committed by a male or a female

1. If they've been jailed, write to the Prison Service and ask whether they have been placed in a male or female prison

Can we post links below for ways to find out email addresses etc?

Love this idea so placemarking - I'm all for action.

We could write to MPs also, even to the MP where the perpetrator lives, or where the prison is? And our own MPs of course.

This gives you the websites of all local newspapers: www.localmediauk.org/A-Z-Newsbrands

This is how to make a complaint to IPSO: www.ipso.co.uk/complain/

Isn't there some journalists' code they gave to abide by though? Which leads to infuriating things like the redoubtable Janice Turner calling men 'she'? Not saying this can't/shouldn't be challenged but just to find out about and keep on the radar.

It's worth bearing in mind that one of the worst offenders, the Guardian, isn't signed up to the Ipso code so you can't complain to Ipso about them.

A lot of the bad reporting stems from the police. Journalists write their reports based on police info. Remember when that group of TW battered a man at Leicester Square station in London? The press reported it as an attack by a group of women. When there was outrage (because anyone could see from the cctv footage that they weren't women) the papers explained that their hands were tied because British Transport Police recorded the perpetrators as women.
So it's definitely a good idea to focus on police, BTP, and cps too.

WhereAreWeNow is right - the Guardian and Independent haven't signed up to the IPSO code. And, as she says, part of the problem comes from the police erroneously reporting attacks by men as being attacks by women.

I think it's a question of doing what we can. So it is worth writing to individual newspapers (and the Guardian has a Readers' editor) about this stuff. Some of the worst offenders are local newspapers, so worth writing to the editor there. If they don't know people are angry, they won't see the need to change anything.

I believe IPSO is reviewing its guidelines on reporting trans issues, so that should be interesting.

Ooh yes RoyalCorgi that should be very interesting.

My belief is organisation is key, but we are somewhat stymied by being a collection of people who don't know each other IRL. It'd be mist effective to have sub-groups who take one topic in this horror show, prisons, children, etc etc and focus on that. I get totally overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.

Blog on the IPSO investigation: www.ipso.co.uk/news-press-releases/blog/ipso-blog-examining-editorial-standards-in-coverage-of-transgender-issues/

I agree that it all starts with the police (the media simply report what the police/courts say). f we wanted to tackle the issue of the police erroneously recording male sex crimes as 'female' crimes, then I think we need to go for the politicians. We should write to our MPs and ask them to forward our letter to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, and to the Minister of State for Policing and the Fire Service, Kit Malthouse.

"In 2016, IPSO launched well-received guidance on the reporting of transgender matters. Since then, we have continued to engage with organisations interested in coverage of this area."

I wonder who the organisations/people were who provided them with guidance?