Lost trust in the media

[SuperSleepyBaby]

I feel the transgender issue has had a big effect on how i feel about the media.

Like the Guardian reporting on Wi-Spa. I used to like the Guardian but dont look at it anymore.

And every newspaper, TV channel using female pronouns for male rapists etc.

There’s an agenda being rammed down people’s throats.

It also makes me question other issues that are reported. I used to be more trusting.

Yes - I know of a few gender stories that really should have gone to press but didn't as there was some sort of missing element. Not that they weren't true, but "lacking a human angle" etc.

People rightly slate the bbc as the balance has been completely absent, and at times they've basically been TRAs. At the same time, due to being a public company, they have a duty to provide balance which we, the public, should use.

Only by doggedly telling them where the balance is missing (alongside important cases such as Forstater and Kiera Bell's ) are they forced to pay attention and provide that balance.

I went to a local feminist meeting back in 2019 and met a local bbc news presenter there who I got chatting to; she said it was the lack of balance at the bbc that was the issue. And that she wasn't alone in thinking that. Many have worked hard there to turn the tide.

There's more to do and further to go.

it's very short sighted to say "I've given up on the bbc;" I listen / watch with a view to monitoring that balance. And email to hold to account. As we do with the nhs.

Because the vast majority of the population haven't a clue and just lap it up.

Which is partly how it became popularised. Becoming Leo in 2014 on cbbc a prime example.

(And another reason why there should be a public inquiry. So many public bodies have peddled this shit.)

Glad to see that despite being a mother of 3 with apparently no knowledge of all this, you've found the time to explore and represent the motivations and feelings of this niche group of men.

Personally I reckon that greater use of the words pretend and real would have knocked much of this performance of male dominance on the head years ago.

Essay on Arendt's work on totalitarianism and loneliness explores the political importance of making us mistrust sources of information:

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

I still watch the BBC for general information and on the subject of gender for the diluted/redacted/be kind version.
Then find people like James Essess (sp?) on Twitter and The Times Janice Turner highlight what is really happening in the ideology movement.

@WarriorN I agree that we need to question the BBC but I do wonder if there is just some blue haired twenty something who spikes every email of dissent.
I was re reading the bbc coverage of Sandie Peggie yesterday. Anyone who only looks at the bbc for their news would have a very inaccurate understanding of events. So depressing.
On the positive side, in an unrelated facebook group I belong to, yesterday somebody (who turned to be an author/journalist from Brighton) started a new post and although gender ideology wasn’t the topic she casually mentioned that Glinner was widely known for his transphobic views. She was instantly challenged by another member who wrote that there was nothing phobic about standing up for women and girls. Lots of likes and support followed so the journalist had a taste of reality outside her Brighton bubble.

Sure. But trust must be earned. It should never (will never) be granted as default.

Many of these media sources have thrown away the trust that they built up over years to push obvious mistruths. In this they only have themselves to blame.

I haven’t trusted the media since Neil Kinnock was Labour Leader.😂

I don't think the BBC is pleasing anyone right now! I've been looking at trans media and social media recently because of the Peggie case and they are fuming about how DU is being portrayed, how the news is using he/him, how it's all really biased and negative. Also how trans people are never represented in the media. Complaints have been submitted!

It's very interesting to see the case from that perspective.

@Mittens67 yes it's extremely depressing.

It's very clear from their coverage of the PB ban that they were chucking it around like a hot potato trying to work out who to give it do. Thankfully Debra Cohen finally took it up.

I did notice over Xmas that they snuck a terf on in a big interview around women and fertility in sport. She was a sports scientist and when I found her very quiet Twitter, she'd been RT Emma Hilton etc.

It's not ever going to be the big reactionary swing as in the US. At the same time, slow and steady wins the race. If the uk can embed legal precedents and demonstrate safeguarding issues and then embed these protections, especially in education, it will be less at risk of being completely up rooted in the future. And fewer children will be at risk as we can openly discuss the ideological fallacies.

It's very interesting to see the case from that perspective.

It really highlights their utter delusions. I usually check BBC, The Times and the Grauniad. The twitter.

It is easy to see why Upton's supporters think the BBC coverage is awful: their starting point, after all, is that misgendering is "literal violence". Their understanding of actual language, let alone nuance, is completely skewed.

I trust no media on everything. I trust certain media on certain topics.

‘ It is noticable that the people born female but currently identifying as male aren’t the ones being aggressive, abusing women, telling them to die in a fire and so on. Almost like trans women behave like other violent males isn’t it ?’

I think these fora tend to have a rather rosy view of FIM people. Several were in the forefront of campaigning for the legislation which has resulted in the current climate of obfuscation and misplaced ‘ privilege’. You might like to take a look at the people photographed together as these pioneers.

sorry for the irrelevance but….

I think these fora tend to have a rather rosy view of FIM people. Several were in the forefront of campaigning for the legislation which has resulted in the current climate of obfuscation and misplaced ‘ privilege’.

Rosy view in re: crimes but grounded in various studies, I think.

And yes, the work of Whittle, Freddie Mc et al does not indicate a negligible impact on women. The legislative and policy changes they've achieved have been actively harmful to women.

Yes, don’t a lot of TRAs hate the Guardian and think it’s so transphobic? Which I find hilarious as it’s the most pro-TRA outlet apart from Pink News.

Yes, don’t a lot of TRAs hate the Guardian and think it’s so transphobic? Which I find hilarious as it’s the most pro-TRA outlet apart from Pink News.

Yes, it's funny. Apparently it's a transphobic rag! Lots of whining about Sonia Sodha (Observer) and Sean Ingle (Guardian) in particular, direct quote: "he’s written a lot of hate about trans women in sport".

One person's hate is another person's true facts!

Comment about Radio 4: "Woman’s Hour, Today programme, PM, The Moral Maze, are all nests of transphobia, especially the first two. BBC News across the board is grimly trans-hostile."

Being on Twitter has been an eye-opener for me. Admittedly it also gives a very skewed perspective, depending on who you follow, but I was amazed UK people relying on the BBC were so shocked when Trump was voted in as all the US news I was getting on Twitter suggested there was no chance of Kamala Harris getting in.

I had a discussion on LinkedIn with a gender critical poster recently, who commented on a post saying that most journalists would consider themselves to be trying to undermine the powers that be (or something similar). Her comment was that that description made them sound like activists whereas journalists surely should be reporting facts so that the populus could judge and make up their own minds.

I do get the impression that journalism has changed and that, in the past there was more effort to report important news, whether it agreed with your agenda and politics or not, whereas nowadays, the main activity is driving the agenda you want. It’s certainly much more blatant and I’m not convinced it’s simply that we’re more aware now.

Then again, sometimes I think I’m just imagining some past golden age when there was more expectation of “decency” than there is now. It may be that people were always just as corrupt, but it was just better hidden.

Sealioning?

I wouldn't say I've lost trust completely in the entire media because they have nearly all gone doolally over genderwoo.

The newspapers I've read for decades, and the other news outlets I've followed for years, already had their 'slant' which I knew about and made allowances for. I've learnt to check a story from several viewpoints before deciding on what I think is as near to the objective truth as I can get, filtering out each source's known 'slant'.

Although a newspaper is 'captured' as far as trans issues are concerned, that doesn't mean that I think it is lying to me about the Nitrates Directive or the death toll in the in floods in Kentucky.

I may well disagree with their editorial line on what the nitrates allowance should be, or what is contributing to flooding around the world, but just because they've fallen for TWAW doesn't mean I think everything else they say is a lie.

One of my concerns is people who say 'MSM is lying to you!' and then rely on completely random SM sources as their alternative source of 'the truth'.
Frying pan to fire.

I lost trust in the media many years ago, and I think more and more people are waking up to the realisation that it's all just narratives spun for the benefit of a small group of people. I try not to think about how many people do still swallow it all like it's gospel - it's very frustrating - but try to take comfort in knowing that every day at least one more person is turning away from mainstream media in disgust.

The legacy media is dying on its arse because it treats us all like we're stupid. And quite frankly, it deserves to die on its arse.

One of my concerns is people who say 'MSM is lying to you!' and then rely on completely random SM sources as their alternative source of 'the truth'.
Frying pan to fire.

Yes and some individuals are definitely exploiting this.

So it's same old same old.

Agree, it's terrible. Makes me re-think a lot of things really. Like every time someone says something is racist or bigotry, I stop and think.

I think the most reliable news/news checking I get is from the amazing knowledgeable women of Mumsnet! At least here you get a variety of opinions too.

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/its-a-man-man/

Cath Leng on media misrepresentations.

The PA seems to have a bit to answer for.

Being on Twitter has been an eye-opener for me. Admittedly it also gives a very skewed perspective, depending on who you follow, but I was amazed UK people relying on the BBC were so shocked when Trump was voted in as all the US news I was getting on Twitter suggested there was no chance of Kamala Harris getting in.

This. It was quite eye-opening to see the shock. I think this issue has made so many of us rethink everything. I was in the feet-stamping category after the Brexit referendum but the 2024 US election I knew Harris wouldn’t win and I think it’s this issue that has made me get myself out of my bubble.

If you are still around...
To deal with the points you raise...

'A seat at the table'. The problem is that women made what you might call 'reasonable accommodations' to transwomen, but then the piss started to be taken, with intact middle-aged men using female changing rooms, intact men getting themselves moved into the female prison estate and men (who even if they have suppressed their testosterone still have physical advantages over natal women) forcing their way into women's sports. Any attempt to say 'Er, hang on a minute, this doesn't seem terribly safe or fair...' was howled down with cries of 'TRANSPHOBE!' and 'NO DEBATE'.

Women who tried to discuss the issues on MN found themselves booted off the board (much gratitude for raising women's awareness is due to LangCleg and Barracker, both formerly of this parish, and others whose names I cannot now remember). Some women were hounded out of their jobs or sacked or lost work. A number of women left political parties (I was one of them) when they found that their reasonable questions were not answered and they were told to take a hike (I no longer vote LibDem at a national level, though I will locally for candidates I trust and whose views I know).

So, with that back story, they have lost any entitlement they might have ever had for 'a seat at the table'. They need to earn it back.

is there any science behind the claim that there must be something wrong with their minds? You might want to acquaint yourself with the paraphilia autogynephilia. I know you weren't talking about teenagers, but there is quite a lot of evidence that many of the young women caught up in this are autistic and often anxious, and thus vulnerable. I know of one who, in her late teens and after a grand total of three psych appointments, was put on testosterone and later had a double mastectomy - having been perhaps the most feminine of a group of sisters. As you can imagine, her mother is raging. It has been difficult for the siblings of the newly-minted transman; one has jumped on the beeeee kiiiind bandwagon, the other is a tactful but committed GC. No one talks about the fallout for the siblings...

You may have already had answers to your questions, but I've not had a chance to catch up today and I wanted to answer them since you had addressed me.

and @ClawedButler I just wanted to say that I love your user name, and it makes me smile every time!

Completely agree.

And also that it wasn't just trans stuff; bitcoin and crypto had a massive impact there too.