I’ve just emailed this to the editor [email protected]
To the Editor,
The article by Fiona Ferguson published on your website
www.google.com/amp/s/www.thejournal.ie/woman-jailed-criminal-court-5392090-Mar2021/%3famp=1
on Thursday 25 March is in breach of the Code of Practice set out by the Press Council of Ireland.
The headline states:
“Woman jailed after being found with thousands of ‘depraved’ child abuse images”.
The article continues to refer to the perpetrator as a woman and uses the pronouns she and her throughout.
Not until the 20th paragraph does the journalist clarify that “she” is a “transgender woman”.
A transgender woman is biologically male and is not a woman. The headline and majority of the article therefore constitute “a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distorted report or picture” - Principle 1.2 of the Code.
Biological sex is highly relevant when reporting sexual or violent crimes because these are typical of male-pattern criminality, and statistically almost never perpetrated by female people.
When journalists refer to a male person carrying out a typically male act of sexual offending as if it were perpetrated by a female person, it distorts the wider ongoing conversation around male sexual offending which has wider consequences and is not in the public interest.
It is necessary, as per Principle 1.3 of the Code, that you publish a retraction and clarification promptly and with due prominence.
Yours etc.