Fascinating article about the failure and complicity of the BBC regarding transactivism

[lcakethereforeIam]

In Unherd

https://archive.ph/hxJFg

https://unherd.com/2026/05/inside-the-capture-of-the-bbc/?edition=us

Long but worth a read.

My university lecturer also presented many of the same lectures I did to BBC staff as part of BBC training.

One of these lectures covered the topic of the ethics of censorship.

His key point was this, and it's one of those things that's stuck in my head to this day.

He looked around the room and said, "you may all think I'm a chain smoking right winger and you may all think you are really progressive lefties in wanting to ban the daily mail, but one day you might really need it".

He then talked about censorship and who controlled the power of censors and how people with other views balanced things and both held each other to account.

His key point was that censors rarely had any accountability at all and there was very little transparency. He talked about how censorship in the right hands might be finding but you couldn't trust that to always be the case.

He was very perceptive about a lot of things that have since come to pass. He taught me to recognise them - that basically what I've tried to pass on here over the years. I wasn't a good student then but I think I've done good in the end.

Fwiw I don't think he was a right winger. I think he was a liberal who understood liberalism and the history of liberal democracy.

There are plenty of people who probably still work at the BBC who sat through a lecture where he said very similar. This is what is the most depressing thing of all to me.

An interview with the author from the OP article, Rob Burley, on The Free Speech Union YouTube:

I'm not sure this has been shared yet:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/817e159b-57ba-4b5f-b33b-a1962f05868d?shareToken=4b47f8481458b8e6286d14d6921caca4&ver=article

It was a good article. I don't know how widely read it would have been on Unherd alone. I'm glad the Telegraph and now the Times have picked it up. Hopefully that will see it more widely disseminated.

Very glad to hear that the Times and Telegraph have picked this up

Likewise.

All those people in journalism - particularly those with beef at the BBC (and outside journalism but studied it like me) are starting to speak up properly. Not just in hushed whispers.

I do believe this is a force to be reckoned with.

Those of us who believed in journalism all along, and believe in it being impartial believe it stands before all else as it's the very thing that protects us all no matter what our individual politics.

I do not have to agree with you. I just have to believe that telling the truth as best as we can without compromise.

Transwomen can't be women and thats sad but it's the truth. And telling the truth is important to people who don't even want to admit it. For their sake as much as anyone else's.

I have said that the light of truth would always win through one way or another.

How long do we have to wait for the Guardian, and others? Serious stories, of major public interest, and they are choosing not to report them.

These organisations are proving themselves not to be serious journalists, but instead are just opinion columnists.

Grantham sex offender jailed for contacting young girls - BBC News https://share.google/pJtuxIVcivda8LJTl

Wow bbc reporter managed to type the entire article using no pronouns. It's still strange to read but way better than she/her.

Yet again another crime that never happens

I think there are still some good journalists at the Guardian, women and men, but the editorial tone is deplorable. As I've said before, it seems to me nothing much changes whilst Viner is still in charge.

I agree, I can’t see how this is some ground breaking article

absolutely people need to think carefully about what they wish for - it’s like the get rid of monarchy..do you really want Farage or similar in Buckingham palace -

the main criticism I have of the Beeb is the insane bloody promoting misogynistic drag acts - really shouldn’t be doing it as a publicly funded body

of course the beeb want to be impartial
and talk in a balanced way about immigration and trans people instead of taking a GC view

I'm afraid I have much less faith in the BBC than that.

Yes, rather skillfull!

The writer gave the feminine name Katie Birtles and the photograph [we could see was of a man], then wrote, for example, ‘the offender’, ‘the forty year old’, ‘Birtles’, ‘the defendant’, saying neither ‘she’ or ‘he’, as @mrshoho says, and without telling us he is a transwoman either.

That's disgraceful.

Skillfull perhaps but surely a crime against transparency, fact and clarity?

Also - it is not impartial is it?

Is not saying male better than saying she?

Feels like the same thing in a different frock!

That is a News Story from May 2025.

I agree that it is duplicitous but at least better than the local press and the "Sex Offender" websites that call him a "woman" and do the whole she/her dance.

Lincolnshire Police's 2025 Press Release about Birtles refers to him as a woman and she/her so that is probably where the rot started.

Further info about Birtles:
https://transcrimeuk.com/2025/01/19/katie-b/

"O’Farrell/Birtles was apparently charged on 18 January 2025 and remanded into custody. It seems likely therefore that he is the correspondent named only as “Katie B” from male prison HMP Lincoln who wrote to the prison newspaper Inside Time in the wake of April’s UK Supreme Court decision on the definition of woman in the Equality Act. In the letter, “Katie B” unironically rails against the judgment, particularly that male sex offenders such as himself should be incarcerated in male prisons and potentially have to share cells with other male prisoners. It presumably never occurs to him that the judgment should also protect female prisoners from ever having to share a cell with male sex offenders like him."

Nice to know he will be fuming in his cell about the EHRC Code of Practice 😈

2025 story - in case my previous post with more info has disappeared permanently into the Mumsnet "Waiting for approval" black hole.

I think, as the tide continues to turn, The Guardian , BBC, et al., will find themselves becoming increasingly irrelevant if they continue to present only one side of these issues, and, at some convenient point, the trans+ (as it appears this is what we are now supposed to be calling it) will be quietly dropped as a major issue.

If it stops making them money or gaining them political capital in any way, they'll drop it like a hot potato. I don't believe for one second that these editors care one iota about trans people or the whole sorry mess, except for perhaps in their own personal relationships. They're in it for kudos, money, and to keep their cushy jobs.

It will be beyond refreshing to see the mainstream get back to real journalism again. We'll see.

Er no.

The BBC has spent more than a decade lying to us that men are women.

It has also spent the last decade telling us that we can't trust anything other than the BBC because there's so much misinformation out there.

If you think that the activism from BBC staff was just confined to trans or drag, then you're not paying attention. Regardless of political views, this activism has infected every part of BBC journalism, from issues ranging from climate change to black lives matter.

Just watch any episode of Have I Got News For You: Every joke is about Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage or Donald Trump. It never seriously satirised Biden and is always absurdly gentle on the current government.

It's not fit for purpose. The trans issue is not the one thing an otherwise brilliant broadcaster got wrong. It's the canary in the coal mine.

Tbf, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump are much better comedy material than dull Starmer.

A PM who pretends that men can be women is the basis for a pretty good comedy IMO

I'm sorry you don't understand the issues or how journalism and democracy works.

Unfortunately some voters think an election is to elect a comedian, not a Prime Minister. Hence where the UK and the US end up with grifters and incompetents.

I think it's a bit harsh to blame the electorate. It's the quality of the candidates that is the problem.

Agreed, we can only chose from what's put before us, and the parties are the one's putting up mostly grifters and incompetent's, the few diamonds in the rough get deselected by the parties.