Express challenges IPSO on pronouns

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/comment/scottish-express-referring-dr-beth-34670335

An astonishing article.

Well done, that editor.

'In court stories, accuracy matters above all else (as I and many other journalists before me have found out to our cost) and so we believe the most accurate way of describing Dr Upton is as a man, albeit one who is choosing to live as a woman.'

The Express group has shown genuine leadership here.

This is the world we now inhabit and it is alien to me.

What an excellent article.

Arendt warned about this state of isolation and the dangers of this in much of her work.

"Totalitarianism destroys man’s ability to think, while turning each in his lonely isolation against all others"

Totalitarian movements use ideology to isolate individuals. Isolate means ‘to cause a person to be or remain alone or apart from others’. Arendt spends the first part of ‘Ideology and Terror’ breaking down the ‘recipes of ideologies’ into their basic ingredients to show how this is done:
ideologies are divorced from the world of lived experience, and foreclose the possibility of new experience;
ideologies are concerned with controlling and predicting the tide of history;
ideologies do not explain what is, they explain what becomes;
ideologies rely on logical procedures in thinking that are divorced from reality;
ideological thinking insists upon a ‘truer reality’, that is concealed behind the world of perceptible things.

The way we think about the world affects the relationships we have with others and ourselves. By injecting a secret meaning into every event and experience, ideological movements are forced to change reality in accordance with their claims once they come to power. And this means that one can no longer trust the reality of one’s own lived experiences in the world. Instead, one is taught to distrust oneself and others, and to always rely upon the ideology of the movement, which must be right.
aeon.co/essays/for-hannah-arendt-totalitarianism-is-rooted-in-loneliness

It's not often we see such clarity in an editorial.

Weird, because journalists should have been the first to challenge the chilling effect of omertas.

Well done The Express. About time. The IPSO position on pronouns is a guideline - not a capital offence if you don't kowtow. I've maintained, via several posts on this forum, that one of the most important things that can be done in the interests of accurate reporting is to get IPSO to drop its absurd attitude to pronouns.

One of the first things that ideologies do to succeed is to capture language.

Someone was not impressed by the wagging finger about the IPSO
Polite PFRO though😀

Brilliant article. I hope other outlets follow.

I haven’t been able to view the tribunal, do some of the group with BU in the picture comprise the Wall of Sad?

The Scottish Daily Express showing the way! I hope the rest will stop capitulating and follow suit, now one paper has shown the required courage.

It seems someone in charge at the express has had enough of the shit!

Ah, this was what was rattling about in the back of my mind.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-gareth-roberts/

'We publish what Ipso requires of us here. But I am in no doubt this is an outrageous decision, offensive to the principle of free speech and chilling in its effect on free expression.

When Ipso was set up it was established as a lesser evil. The Leveson Report had called for effective state regulation of the press. The Spectator was resolutely opposed. In place of that undoubted curtailment of free expression, media organisations, including The Spectator, instead agreed to be bound by an independent regulator, whose remit was both to uphold high standards and defend free speech. Ipso was set up to fulfil that role. The Spectator agreed, with other media organisations, to fund the body, subscribe to its Editor’s Code and abide by its rulings. We did so on the basis that self-regulation by an independent body was infinitely preferable to state regulation. But our first duty is not to any committee, no matter how well-intentioned – it is to you, our readers. We are here to report honestly, uphold freedom of speech and defend the right of our writers to express themselves, within the boundaries of the law, as they see fit. '

The photo chosen for that article is also rather interesting and reveals a lot about DUs supporters

Haven’t a great many of us? I genuinely think that this will build on the momentum that was pushed by Bryson and Wadhwa.

Piece by piece the basis of the belief that people are the identity they claim is being eroded. Since rapists are not the sex they claim when they claim to be the opposite to what their body is formed as, and sportspeople, and rape crisis centre staff, and now doctors in employment tribunals why do we need to continue with affirming any person’s gender identity?

And thanks to Dr Upton, who has confirmed yet again that there is no biological basis for gender identity so again it is simply a personal philosophical belief, the question still remains unanswered. What other philosophical belief expects society to use demanded language?

It really is crumbling. Steadily now and not with a catastrophic slide, but steadily crumbling away piece by piece.

That's progress. I've been waiting for some of the mainstream press to start challenging this as they mangle their reporting of rape, paedophilia and sexual assaults on women and children with the pronouns she and her for male sex offenders. Let's hope it spreads.

And thank you @RethinkingLife for the Hannah Arendt qotes. She had a lot to say that's relevant to the dystopian world we're finding ourselves in at the moment:

"And this means that one can no longer trust the reality of one’s own lived experiences in the world. Instead, one is taught to distrust oneself and others, and to always rely upon the ideology of the movement, which must be right".

Finally! I’ve often posted about this wondering why media groups don’t challenge IPSO on this. Big organisations like News Corp and the Daily Mail should be telling IPSO where to go on this.

Bravo that editor. I hope others follow suit.

I'm guessing that the press have been given a bit of covering fire here because of the lack of compelled pronouns in court.

The BBC for example defended calling male murderers 'she' by saying that's how they were referred to in court.

But even so, bravo again to the editor but also to the legal team who got the requirement for compelled pronouns in court removed in the first place 👏

I'm so full of fury and despair that if I had access to a horse, I'd be an absurd figure riding on NHS England headquarters, making believe that I'm somewhere between galloping down the ramp at Helm's Deep or the Last Battle and running to the gates of Mordor.

Possibly using a tea towel as an impromptu battle standard with Leeds Spinners' fabulous craftivism:

https://filia.teemill.com/collection/wrong-side-of-history-my-arse/

Absolutely, journalists should have been in the forefront of refusing to toe this ridiculous line. Accuracy and clarity are the essential foundations of news reporting, so no news source should ever have obeyed orders to lie or to deliberately mislead readers.

Good on the Scottish Daily Express for rediscovering the courage to defend journalistic integrity.

It has opened many an eye.

Well done, but it's very overdue.

It's long baffled me that newspapers have been printing headlines like yesterday's ludicrous 'Hampshire woman appears in court charged with raping girl' - during today changed to 'trans woman'. Of course it's the former which was breaking the very first clause of the IPSO code:
Accuracy
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.

www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/

Their sex and gender guidelines were updated last year, it seems - perhaps they used to be more biased?

www.ipso.co.uk/resources/sex-and-gender-identity-guidance/

"Well done, but it's very overdue."

Absolutely. How has it taken so long? And why does it feel like it's not over yet.

Maya in Daily Express (hoping front page image will upload):

https://x.com/MForstater/status/1890190588676636782

At last. Thank you Express.

Pic.

xd with Arabella

Front page of print version: