BBC removes trans charities from support page

[teawamutu]

From Penis News, but hopefully this link won't give them revenues:

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200710172219/www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/07/10/bbc-gender-identity-support-mermaids-lgbt-transgender-non-binary/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20200710172219/www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/07/10/bbc-gender-identity-support-mermaids-lgbt-transgender-non-binary/

The great thing about FOIs is they are available to everyone.

@highame yes it is:)

I can't believe I've only just caught up with this thread I'd seen the title but I'd just assumed the BBC had done it by mistake.

I'm choosing my words carefully but it feels kind of significant.
And now I won't get a scrap of work done today.

I'm not going to get too excited about the FOI - I'm pretty sure the last time I saw one published, it was full of redactions. Although that in itself tells you most of what you wanted to know.

[quote OldCrone]I would be really interested to know the decision making behind this.

Someone tried to find out via FOI, and they refused because:

The information you have requested is excluded from the Act because if held it would be held for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature.’ The BBC is therefore not obliged to provide this information to you and will not be doing so on this occasion. Part VI of Schedule 1 to FOIA provides that information held by the BBC and the other public service broadcasters is only covered by the Act if it is held for ‘purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature”. The BBC is not required to supply information held for the purposes of creating the BBC’s output or information that supports and is closely associated with these creative activities.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_and_support_gender_i#incoming-1606151[/quote]
From upthread. I can't see that the response would be any different?

From upthread. I can't see that the response would be any different?

Oh well, that's that particular avenue of pleasure closed off.

It has made The Times. www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/mermaids-and-other-trans-groups-dropped-by-bbc-advice-line-service-2fsjp9zpb

Removed links as BBC must be impartial

[quote highame]@Goyle is that today[/quote]
Yes, here's a sharetoken link

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-travel-bug-cant-survive-with-this-virus-3lkqhmqll?shareToken=b8eb07ba82ea03ac17927871ce4e49ed

I reckon she's on here - I saw the Jimmy Savile / wrong side of history" comment on here first.

Hi Janice! :)

Mumsnet is a great resource for journalists. I wish more of them would dip in. It's just the clever ones who do😁

Janice and reporters like her are the reason I've gone over to the Times

All trans groups are surprisingly quiet about this.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Have mermaids responded in any way?

I wonder if there's something going on regarding 'deception', that might be surfacing in the near future. I might be wrong but the (putting it kindly) overlooking of the Law regarding the EA by these groups has been massively dangerous to women's rights and has been done by stealth.

The lawyers at the BBC must be checking over every single piece of information they have.

I want a public enquiry, and I'm going to finish all my posts with that sentence

@Wolfgirrl

Have mermaids responded in any way?

From twitter

Following the @BBC's decision to remove all trans organisations for England, Scotland and Wales from their website, we have submitted an FOI request for internal communications relating to the decision. We are interested to see how and why trans organisations have been targeted.

Is the @bbc saying one thing to the public and another to its staff? Img 1 is the stock response. Img 2 is from an internal email.
Our FOI is submitted to find out why they decided to cut all trans orgs covering Eng/Scot/Wales from their new support page. t.co/5ZtTFhG9Zo t.co/K27IyGGWvo

As an aside, can anyone remember if the NHS Gender dysphoria pages used to link to Meena et al?

Mermaids et al

I do hope the BBC responds to Mermaids and fulfils the FOI. I do hope Mermaids recalls that we can all read FOI content. Since we know that the BBC is institutionally pro-genderism, there must be some quite significant reasons this decision was taken. I, for one, would love to read about them.

I want a public enquiry, and I'm going to finish all my posts with that sentence

Yes. We might need several.

All trans groups are surprisingly quiet about this.

Curiouser and curiouser.

They're hesitant to make a public request in case there's a public response, seen by many, that concerns about puberty blockers, and the rest of it, are real and series. This has to be seen in the context of the advice given about lobbying in this area: it must be below the radar. I would expect Mermaids are trying backchannels into the BBC to persuade them to change this.

Thank you @ItsAllGoingToBeFine

I do hope the BBC responds to Mermaids and fulfils the FOI.

There's also this one on behalf of Gendered Intelligence and GenderGP which I posted a link to earlier, asking for the minutes of the meeting in which they made this decision.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/minutes_from_meeting_resulting_i

The one which was refused (also sent by a TRA) was asking for a lot more information, including memos and emails relating to the decision and:
Were any journalists employed by The BBC involved in this decision?
What guidance did you use to decide these registered charities were no longer suitable to provide links to?
Did you receive mail from outside the corporation relating to this page - if so how much correspondence.

The response from the BBC seems to me to be open to challenge: The information you have requested is excluded from the Act because if held it would be held for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature.’

I don't see how information about organisations offering support, and the reasons for their inclusion or non-inclusion on a web page, can be held for the purpose of journalism, art or literature.

They're hesitant to make a public request in case there's a public response, seen by many, that concerns about puberty blockers, and the rest of it, are real and series. This has to be seen in the context of the advice given about lobbying in this area: it must be below the radar. I would expect Mermaids are trying backchannels into the BBC to persuade them to change this.

But they have made a public request. When the BBC responds to their FOI, the response will be available to everyone.

I'll correct that to say that when I looked for the url for the FOI disclosure log, I found out that the BBC don't publish all their FOI responses.

The BBC publishes a selection of responses to previous Freedom of Information requests handled under the Act. The selection of what we publish is made by considering if we believe that there may be a wider public interest, when information is frequently requested, or when information is not already available elsewhere.

www.bbc.co.uk/foi/publication-scheme/classes/disclosure-logs

I've just seen that tweet, it reads to me like a bit of toys chucking out of the pram. Playing the injured party, after investigations, and will push and push so the BBC will have them back with a big grovelling apology

There are other organisations, the BBC don't HAVE to bow down and swear loyalty to mermaids forever ffs.

But yes, a FOI request we can ALL see then, I find it hard to believe the BBC would remove them because some people had a whinge. There would have been reasons

Anyone can make the same FOI, though. And I'm sure it's not just mermaids making it. Mermaids, for some reason, have taken the decision to announce it tho.