Guardian reporting on Scarlet Blake

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/26/cat-killer-sentenced-to-life-for-oxford-as-part-of-sexual-fantasy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Is this a shift?

The paper is now making it (a little) clearer that Scarlet is transgender. It's still not totally clear that he is male.

As far as I can see, every single newspaper is referring to Blake as "she". The Telegraph has the decency to use the word "trans woman" in its opening paragraph, but that's as far as it goes. So the Guardian might be the worst culprit, but it's not the only one.

I read the Guardian article, thought “horrific. And such a male crime” and came straight to mn to see if it was actually a male.
but people who are not on mn, how would they even have the knowledge to want to check this out? Even Louise Tickle didn’t think to immediately check on mn.

The Telegraph article, which seems to have been most recently updated at 9.38pm last night (26th Feb). starts off with "A transgender cat killer who murdered a stranger will be sent to a men’s prison as a judge said the attacker used a transitioning story to “shift responsibility to others”."

It might not have been drafted that way before. Sentencing seems to have taken place at 2.52pm according to the Telegraph timeline. The Guardian reports the sentencing duration but not that Black will be sent to a mens' prison.

Silver lining is that this kind of biased, deceptive reporting does tend to outrage people when they realise. The novelty factor of a woman committing such male crimes tends to make people read as much about the case as possible, from multiple sources. Therefore upping the chance of them discovering the truth.

Several years ago the Guardian and BBC'S terrible reporting on Lauren Jeska and a different transwoman (sob story about not being allowed straighteners in prison, conveniently omitting sex offences against teenage victim) were what woke me up about this. And I was someone who knew quite a lot about transexualism and would have called myself an ally.

I see that the guardian does now have a statement about the changes that were made to one of its articles, and that they are blaming the inaccuracy of their article on the fact that "further details and biographical information" ( ie the fact that the killer is not in fact female) were "not included in the agency copy on which our initial version relied".
Call me old fashioned but getting a basic fact like that wrong because a story was already written for you is a bit of a mickey mouse error for a national newspaper.
I imagine it is also a false explanation of the update - ie that it is simply not true that the agency copy is the reason why they misrepresented the killer's sex .

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/23/cat-killing-woman-guilty-murdering-man-oxford-scarlet-blake-jorge-martin-carreno

Call me old fashioned but getting a basic fact like that wrong because a story was already written for you is a bit of a mickey mouse error for a national newspaper.

I don't particularly want to defend the Guardian. However, when you are using agency copy for a court case, you have to be incredibly careful. Most newspapers will not change details in the copy because you need to be accurate.

To me, the bigger problem is the court referring to this vile man as a woman in the first place.

I think that's a really good point about people being confused as to 'which way round' a transwoman is. People hear the word 'woman' more than 'trans' and possibly think it's a woman having an identity crisis.

The media reporting on this case is just depressing. Who are they afraid of offending?

Yes to both of the above points. Both occurred to me from the start.

The Traliban.

@Gatorpickle I haven't heard that one before but it's very apt.

I don’t know if anyone has already asked, but does anyone on here know if the murder and cat torture and killing have been recorded in official crime statistics as a male, or as a female, crime?

I'm hoping as SB is off to a male prison, male....

It's also occurred to me that journalists could report which prison more freely to emphasise the male aspect.

Or that it's a male prison

That won't work in Scotland, though.

I was thinking the same. I suspect that a lot of people have "educated themselves" about exactly who is meant by the terms "Trans man" and "trans woman" in the last 24 hours.
It's the Isla Bryson effect.

Has anyone seen this - the Graun is reporting that more women may be psychopaths than previously thought. They’ve got a hide! That’s what happens when you call male psychos “women” you prats.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/26/more-women-may-be-psychopaths-than-previously-thought-says-expert?CMP=twt_gu&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium#Echobox=1708960949

What a weird article - seems to use "women" and "female" interchangeably?
U ok Graun?

The lying gaslighting bastards.

The Guardian is not our friend.

That sums it up I would say.

All of us saw that woman kills cat etc headline and thought it was worth checking out what kind of woman it was. Does the Guardian have no sense of curiosity? I think they actively chose not to know.

I feel about the Guardian's excuse as I do about the t-shirt that was printed with 'rape' by mistake (oops, they meant to put 'rap'). Yeah. Chinny reckon.

Well, they should be interchangeable in any study of adult humans but who knows what this means.
It could legitimately be that there are more women who are 'psychopaths' in its proper meaning - bearing in mind it doesn't equate to 'violent sicko', quite a lot of CEOs , surgeons etc are now reckoned to have psychopathic traits.