Glinner yesterday in Daily Telegraph... shocking!

[loveyouradvice]

I recognise I may be cross posting but couldnt spot another one.

What is most shocking is their very selective reporting of Mumsnet to demonstrate how "anti-glinner" we are and to support the fact they are positioning him as anti-trans not pro women... Shoddy journalism. Unbalanced and pernicious.

How did Graham Linehan, the creator of Father Ted, become the most hated man on the internet?
The writer's battle with trans activists has cost him his Twitter account and many friends. And it all began with an episode of The IT Crowd
By
Tom Fordy

Linehan is also the co-creator and/or writer of popular comedies The IT Crowd, Black Books, Big Train and Motherland. But his more recent position, at the centre of the trans debate’s most toxic area, has been deeply unfunny. Now Linehan has been permanently suspended from Twitter...

Linehan also caused upset when he compared treatment for trans kids to Nazi experiments. In December 2018 he opposed a Big Lottery Fund grant of £500,000 to trans kids charity Mermaids and encouraged Mumsnet users to complain (“Mumsnetters Assemble!” he wrote). A counter campaign was set up by popular gamer Hbomberguy – real name Harry Brewis – which raised a further £264,000 for Mermaids...

After being suspended from Twitter Linehan took to Mumsnet. In a bizarre, 3.16am post, he complained that he’d violated new rules by using the word “groomer” (“A phrase Twitter recently decided was Not Allowed”) and said that Twitter has “a high-percentage of trans-identified employees” who are silencing feminists and allies who don’t adhere to anti-misgendering rules. There was an ironic backlash as the Mumsnetters assembled.

“This is a female space and I don’t think an entitled male should keep barging in here every time he needs something from us,” said one. “Sorry who are you and why should I care that you’ve been banned from Twitter? You seem to be a man from the looks of it so why are you posting in the feminism forum? This is a female space,” replied another.

Since the suspension, Linehan has been on Parler encouraging “all those who care about free speech” to delete their Twitter.

[Post edited by MNHQ to avoid breach of copyright law]

[ScrimpshawTheSecond]

(Glinner was allegedly banned from twitter for the use of the word groomer, The Baroness was censured after calling Minor Attracted Persons paedophiles.

It's decidedly odd that any time anyone starts to poke around and mention safeguarding, paedophilia, etc, they get shut down quicker than you can squeak. Very, very odd.

[Waspnest]

What a pile of shite. I'm always intrigued when MN is mentioned in these articles. So many people must come here expecting controversy on tap and are faced with parking AIBUs complete with diagrams. Is it a sign that people are starting to take MN seriously?

[Nancydrawn]

I don't know all the rules--maybe he didn't have enough followers? Or maybe not American enough? Who knows.

Or it could be that his positions on trans rights marks him as a non-liberal in American eyes. Fwiw, it's relatively rare in America (where Parler is based) to make anti-trans/gender critical arguments and be considered liberal. Most of that sort rhetoric in America comes from the religious right. It's also lumped in with general admonitions against homosexuality and occasionally against feminism. Many of the comments about trans issues that you see on mumsnet wouldn't be out of place at, say, Liberty University or Pat Robertson's 700 Club. But Robertson also thinks that support for trans rights is stems from feminist-inspired erosion of traditional gender roles, with women's rights/feminism leading to the breakdown of society. This wouldn't go far on the feminist board. (Also he thinks feminism is responsible for hurricanes, but that's a story for another time.)

It's just a different political axis in the States. I'd also say that the fact that most gender criticism comes in the same breath as anti-feminist and homophobic criticism has made the lines more clear.

I think that's part of the reason people were startled by JKR's posts. In America, it's as if she came out as a Trump supporter. He's done a lot to end trans rights--for example, just a couple weeks ago he ended gender identity as a possible criteria for health-care sex discrimination, meaning that hospitals and doctors now have a right to discriminate on the basis of gender identity and can refuse to treat trans patients. (In the same position paper, hospitals/doctors are now allowed to discriminate against people who have had abortions; in America, it's really lumped together.) This happened right around when she was posting her tweets about "people who menstruate," and it got conflated in the debate. I mean, plenty of Americans were disheartened by what she wrote, but many others were particularly surprised to hear her use rhetoric they associate more with Trump and the religious right.

In Britain, it reads differently, and people were not as surprised.

So, yes: strange bedfellows.

[RCBadger]

Spiked did the same thing in regards to Glinner; they did a mostly sympathetic article with a reference at the end about how he was made very unwelcome on Mumsnet.

[Thinkingabout1t]

The worst bit of that is the misrepresentation of the MN thread. Most of the people attacking Glinner on that thread were trolls who had just joined that day for that very purpose. Most of us on here support Glinner.

Exactly what I came on here to say. All the troll posts were deleted early in the morning when the moderators arrived, and were anyway swamped by the supportive comments from genuine MNers.

Anyone else think it's a bit suspicious that Tom Fordy had access to all that trolling put up during the night, when it would have been deleted by the time he got to work?

Sent to him directly by the trolls, I presume. But what journalist on a national newspaper would just accept the trolls' story without checking? It would take 10 seconds to look on Mumsnet and find what actually happened. Major journalistic fail.

[StandUpStraight]

Major journalistic fail, or deliberate attempt to paint a completely inaccurate picture? I incline to the latter view. @glinner don’t let it get you down. The fact that they even need to go there is proof that you’ve made a difference. They’re really stepping up the campaign right now, which means that they’re absolutely terrified.

[Thinkingabout1t]

Major journalistic fail, or deliberate attempt to paint a completely inaccurate picture? I incline to the latter view.

It does look like that, StandUpStraight. But I can't understand why a journalist would deliberately write a false story that they know can be very easily proved untrue? Anyone who glanced at Mumsnet would see that the Telegraph story was fake news. It doesn't do either Fordy or the Telegraph any good.

[prolefeed]

Well exactly. One is lazy, the other is complicit.

[NotTerfNorCis]

Another example of the 'Karen' pejorative here:

It read to me like a Victorian morality tale. Like for sure there will be telegraph readers going ”I don’t understand what’s wrong with what he said” but seeing the consequences of “this is what happens when you don’t hold your tongue Karen“ will make them think twice.

Interesting how this TRA is specifically warning 'Karens' to hold their tongues - does s/he just have women in mind, or does s/he mean all Telegraph readers? If the latter, then Karen now means anyone you don't agree with, and is used in a threatening way.

[wellbehavedwomen]

@Glinner your staunch support of women's rights, at massive cost to yourself, makes you absolutely bloody welcome, any time you feel like a visit.

[loveyouradvice]

Anyone fancy writing to the Telegraph and telling them what Mumsnet members REALLY said?? If they got several emails/letters they would notice and might include one or two - or at least notice what they've done! I think it is shoddy journalism rather than editorial intent.... the writer knew what they were doing but not sure the ed team did!

[prolefeed]

I wrote earlier. 🤷‍♀️ Just asked if they support journalistic misinterpretation and suggested strongly that their people learned to check their sources.

[prolefeed]

(To be clear - I sent a note via their editorial contact form - I didn’t write ‘a letter’.)

[noraclavicle]

Interestingly, the DT has removed comments from that hatchet job on Glinner. They were open this morning and almost overwhelmingly GC and supportive of him. They closed fairly early and now they appear to have gone altogether. Funny, eh?

[ChattyLion]

Good on you Glinner, and that’s a bizarre and unfair article.
Letters to the Editor for publication in The Daily Telegraph can go to [email protected].
They ask for name, address, and work and home telephone numbers to be included)

[WeetabixBananaHipsterFFS]

Kathleen Stock, Jane Clare Jones, Meghan Murphy and Magdalen Berns

It was very thoughtful of this Tom character to signpost readers in those directions.

[DancelikeEmmaGoldman]

I’m old-fashioned, but I yearn for the days journalists had actual conversations with people about issues and didn’t consider republishing bits off the internet as actual investigation.

Republishing tweets is the same as picking random people on the street and asking their opinion. Good to fill in five minutes before the news, but not exactly proper reporting.

This piece is just repackaging stuff that has been published elsewhere. It’s slovenly reporting with about the level of skill required to write a sixth form essay. Cheap filler to generate a bit of controversy without having to do any actual work.

[HebeMumsnet]

Morning, everyone!

OP, we're really sorry but we aren't allowed to have entire articles republished here - it breaks copyright laws. We've edited your OP down to just include the relevant bits about Mumsnet (we thought that would be better than taking the thread down and getting you to repost) but if there are bits in there you'd like to have remained instead, just drop us a line and we can do another edit for you.

[WanderinWomb]

Mum42069 post saying :go away you aren't welcome here was written by a twitter troll who was crowing about it.

How did Tom Fordy even see that post from a banned user ,was posted about 3 am?

Glinner's post stated where else he can be found and didn't mention Parler. Using a fake Parler account screengrab that was passed around by Twitter trolls isn't research.

That wasn't journalism. Im planning to complain to Telegraph but the whole piece was so bad am not sure where to start.

[CorianderLord]

You really should have linked and not C+P. You're essentially stealing the TG content...

[NotTerfNorCis]

How did Tom Fordy even see that post from a banned user ,was posted about 3 am?

The TRAs were circulating it and claiming it was typical for the thread.

[WanderinWomb]

@NotTerfNorCis

How did Tom Fordy even see that post from a banned user ,was posted about 3 am?

The TRAs were circulating it and claiming it was typical for the thread.

Nice research Tom

[BlackForestCake]

Being fair for a moment, journalists being awake and working at odd hours is hardly unusual. Did you never see newspapers being printed overnight on Play School?

[ArriettyJones]

@BlackForestCake

Being fair for a moment, journalists being awake and working at odd hours is hardly unusual. Did you never see newspapers being printed overnight on Play School?

A young man reading Mumsnet in the middle of the night just as the whole Glinner thread happened (and before deletions) does seem a very fortuitous and slightly unlikely coincidence, though, doesn’t it?

Unless he was was tipped off to log on at that time, or only saw it second hand via screenshots or archive caches. Glinner himself was the only one who could have known he was about to post here at 3am. It isn’t something obvious or easy to predict.

[BovaryX]

That wasn't journalism. Im planning to complain to Telegraph but the whole piece was so bad am not sure where to start

No. The Telegraph should be ashamed. And as Arrietty says, it's very strange that whoever wrote it used such an unrepresentative post from Mumsnet. Sloppy reporting. Smells like a set up.