Agree that for the Times it is a badly constructed article. Almost like someone did a cut and paste and put the paragraphs together in a haphazard way. Or the Times now think their readers dont want facts presently clearly and precisely but need gossip titbits in between.
So I have pulled out the paragraphs that seem to have the facts:
... JK Rowling’s publisher invited the transgender activist group Mermaids to review an article in a magazine for A-level law students, which summarised a High Court test case on freedom of expression.
Management at Hodder Education, part of Hachette UK, referred the article on the ruling to Mermaids, asking it to suggest “examples we can use to counteract the tone and opinions in the piece” and to suggest changes to “anything you feel is untrue, unfair and/or offensive”.
In response to the invitation to suggest changes, the head of legal and policy at Mermaids sent four closely typed pages, including a comment that the article “doesn’t come over as balanced”.
Even before this, Hodder had heavily edited the court report, removing two-thirds of the original, explaining: “We also have to be very careful how we present certain views.”
In its justification for the intervention, a Hodder editor told him: “The claimant’s [Harry Miller’s] views and the judge’s [Mr Justice Julian Knowles’s] comments about transgender issues would be offensive to most of our readers and our staff.”
James Benefield, a senior executive at Hodder, had sent Yule the Mermaids review and told him: “Mermaids have requested quite a few changes here. It is important we do follow all of the attached advice — not only is it from a trans-specialist organisation, it is also from the company lawyer who felt they were best placed to review the piece.”
He stated that it was “an issue of balance rather than of censorship or freedom of speech” and made a mysterious reference to “various occurrences in other things we’ve published”. ...