The BBC breached accuracy rules by failing to mention that convicted murderer Scarlet Blake identifies as transgender, the public broadcaster’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) has said.
However, the BBC did not break impartiality rules by referring to the male murderer as “she” or “her,” the unit said on Thursday.
The ECU also used “she/her” pronouns when referencing Blake in the summary of its findings, saying it “does not indicate a view on which pronouns might be appropriate in other contexts.”
Following the BBC’s reporting on the conviction and the sentencing, the broadcaster received “a number of complaints,” mostly focusing on two articles that referred to Blake as a woman without mentioning his trans status, the unit said.
According to the ECU, Blake’s trans status had not been mentioned in the police’s pre-trial briefing or during most of the court proceedings.
The fact was only brought up by Blake’s lawyer four days before his conviction “on the basis that Blake claimed her experience of coming out as transgender and her parents’ adverse reaction to it accounted for much of her subsequent behaviour,” the summary says.
The ECU said it noted the most of BBC reports after that did mention Blake’s gender identity, and “considered that the omission of such information in the two instances specified by complainants, in a context where it had become material to an understanding of the case, amounted to a breach of the BBC’s standards of accuracy.”
The two offending articles include an initial version of a report on the conviction, and a report on the sentencing.
The ECU said that the BBC had taken “sufficient” action following the complaints about the reporting on Blake’s sentencing before they were escalated to the unit, including adding the missing information “within an hour of its initial publication,” writing to complainants to acknowledge the information should have been included, and publishing a post on March 1 to the same effect.
However, the unit did not uphold “small” numbers of complaints that said it’s misleading to call Blake a “trans woman” and partial to use his preferred pronouns.
According to the summary, some audience members raised accuracy concerns because the term “trans woman” can be misunderstood or not understood by many members of the public.
The ECU disagreed, saying the concept has been widely used “in public discourse and by relevant authorities such as the NHS when referring to people with gender dysphoria.”
It also dismissed the claim that the BBC broke impartiality rules by using Blake’s preferred pronouns, saying “a simple refusal” to use transgender-identified people’s preferred pronouns would effectively be an endorsement of the view that people can’t change their gender.
The ECU “considers impartiality is best served by the BBC’s policy of using language and terminology which is clear and appropriate to the context, taking account of the subject and nature of the content,” it said.
The BBC’s style guide on “transgender” appears to take the view that a person can have a gender identity that’s differs from their sex.
“Transgender, or trans, is an umbrella term for a person whose gender identity differs from their sex recorded at birth. A person born male who lives as a female, would typically be described as a ’transgender woman‘ and would take the pronoun ’she.’ And vice versa,” it reads.
“We generally use the term and pronoun preferred by the person in question, unless there are editorial reasons not to do so,” the style guide says.
