The BBC’s coverage of the criminal Graham Linehan, who was convicted yesterday of criminal damage to a trans woman’s phone (but not of his years-long campaign of harassment against her, despite abundant evidence of that harassment), shows the reality of the supposed “pro-trans bias” of the corporation.
The BBC news article about the court case has been repeatedly edited and now describes the young victim as “a biological male who identifies as a woman”. That’s language straight out of Sex Matters’ anti-trans activists’ style guide, and it flouts the BBC’s own style guide. The latter says:
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. We generally use the term and pronoun preferred by the person in question, unless there are editorial reasons not to do so. If that’s unknown – apply that which fits with the way the person lives publicly.
There’s definitely bias at the Beeb. But it’s not in favour of trans people.