BBC fair and accurate reporting of the judgement

[TheOtherRaven]

Getting increasingly concerned with the way the BBC are covering this story on multiple fronts.

Can we have a quick collation of evidence please from anything you've seen, heard or read just to make sure it's here and listed where it can be easily found?

This is a women's story, based on the long journey of three women to get this to the supreme court. How many women who were actually involved in all this so far have been in the interviews on TV and radio? Compared to how many men?

How much air time and in depth coverage has the issues and women's side of the story been allocated compared to the air time and depth of coverage given to TQ+ issues and side of the story?

What experts actually involved in the legal processes have been interviewed or given explanations of the judgement on air compared to people with opinions? One today actually didn't even know the name of the relevant act. Are facts being challenged and explained on air or are interviewees being allowed to broadcast misinformation unchallenged?

Sumption is your classic mansplainer, isn't he? It's clear he didn't know anything about the subject because he didn't even get the name of the legislation right, but that didn't stop him confidently giving an entirely wrong explanation of what it says.

How can people possibly argue that sex is a spectrum, drives me insane

The main thing I took from Sumption's analysis that delighted Evan Davis so much was that, apart from Sumption not being aware of the name of the statute he was being authoritative over, he declared that he, Sumption, had, through careful study using his considerable abilities, seen what pretty much everyone else had missed: that the Equalities (sic) Act stated that in some contexts service providers were entitled to provide single-sex spaces, but ... drumroll ... they were not compelled to.

I think I can be forgiven for being somewhat underwhelmed by this.

I’ve had that exact same feeling!

It would certainly render the concept of sex discrimination meaningless.

Isn’t the audience selected to represent the national voting picture, as is Question Time’s?

No, it's purely whoever applies for a ticket gets one till they run out. The audiences lean very progressive and on the occasions that a gender critical opinion is aired, it's common for the audience to sit in stoney silence. Cheerleading for gender ideology tends to get a very positive response.

I think the last time I was in an AQ (not Al-Qaeda) audience having got chatting with the woman sat next to me she started ranting at me from out of nowhere about some Conservative politician who, horror of horrors, didn't believe that TWAW, but even worse, was willing to voice this heresy.

I kept my trap shut.

I think their coverage has been mixed. Evan Davies is now a liability, PM appalling. Woman's Hour should have done a special on the verdict, should have interviewed FWS, should have done an in depth programme. Frankly I no longer care if Woman's Hour dies a death.
It interests me how much individual producers colour the coverage.
I will say that on the day of the judgement, the One, Six and Ten were all very good, impartial and factual. I would hope there's some questioning of what the hell is going on at PM after seeing the response to their coverage yesterday.

Sorry to disagree but The World at One has been appalling on this issue, on a number of days, because of Sarah Montague's handling of it. I posted this elsewhere:

Montague tried to put words into the mouth of Peter Carter (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carter_(nurse)) who, contrary to what he was supposed to say, said that there have been issues with transwomen in the wrong-sexed spaces, and transmen too, and that there are problems being experienced by female members of staff.

Another observation by another poster:

I am worried about this too. On World at One BBC R4 yesterday Sarah Montague asked a chap commenting on the impact of the ruling on the NHS whether the answer was to do away with wards organised on sex altogether and just use gender as the determinant for everything.

And the News Quiz shamefully avoided it on Friday's show.

I watched HIGNFY specifically to see if it was included (well, at least I did once I realised it had just started, didn’t sit down to watch it). It also seemed to have gone downhill since I last watched it. Don’t think I will bother again.

They did have it as a summary rather than a question but handled it in a cowardly #nodebate kind of way:

Next up was The News Quiz. It's the main satirical comedy show to discuss the big stories of the week. I wondered "will they go there?" and it seemed not as the end of the programme approached. But they'd left the judgment to be the final question. So, the host read out a legal-sounding summary at super high speed rather than a question (all of the rest of the stories were presented to the panel as questions), clearly done to make the audience think it was incomprehensible, and when he finished, rather than elicit panel responses he quickly said "and that's the end of the show" and it stopped there. It was a contemptuous and astonishingly cowardly way to deal with the issue.

I've just relistened to it on the repeat. I was again struck by this being a disgraceful way to deal with this massive story. Has The News Quiz ever done similar before? If so, I wonder how often and what kind of issues.

@nauticant not in my memory (and I've probably heard most if not every episode for 10-15 years).
I was expecting it to be dealt with in a very biased way but was absolutely astonished by how it was dealt with.

In the last series there was an episode where the host Andy Zaltzman bemoaned how everything was blamed on young trans people, and the laughter was pretty strained.

Yeah I just listened to it now. The BBC should be ashamed of themselves.

But they never ever are. And if they should be and you point it out it's your fault for making them feel bad.

Sounds familiar.

Just heard BBC news at 1 headlines mention Ocados apology to Justine/ MN after the judgement…

I went…you have to put you views forward.. how do we know that it is fairly selected? We don’t, the BBC say they are impartial but then look at Evan Davies, who clearly isn’t. I judge people by their actions not words.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c74z04j23pwo

Not that bad in terms of balance.

This is shocking: https://x.com/MForstater/status/1913539490448130323. I didn't think the BBC would be this blatant.

The problem is that it's not shocking.

Appalling, but not shocking.

Any Answers could be interesting.

It is. So far Anita Anand is being very kind, but both to Louise the "fully transitioned" long term transwoman and to Kate Harris from the LGB Alliance.

Now it's the ex-policeman transwoman who is going to continue using women's single-sex spaces whatever the law says or the rules might be.

There's an underlying sense of threat with him emphasising his bulk.

Both TW so far have had full surgery. Nobody has mentioned the fact that the vast majority of TW have not had full surgery.

Having listened to that I'd say that while Anita Anand is very much of a #bekind persuasion, I'm still left wondering whether she might be GC. Maybe, maybe not. But credit to her that after I've spent years wondering I'm still unable to identify her alignment on this issue.