Monday 17 April 2017

Complaining: it works sometimes.

   A few weeks ago I made a complaint to the BBC, after a regrettable Radio 4 report about a trans woman prisoner in which she was repeatedly misgendered. I received a reply, which I missed at the time because it went into my spam folder.
Many thanks for contacting us about PM, as broadcast on 21 March 2017.
Thanks for raising with us the pronoun we used during the item on a transgender prisoner being moved to a women's prison - we took this to the editor and those involved in the story.
You're right about the pronoun use during the item. We always seek to use the correct wording, but unfortunately that didn't happen here.
It was an oversight, for which we apologise.
We value the time you've taken to point this out and do seek to use the correct wording.
   So there we are, a straight apology. Most likely not just because of me, but because Trans Media Watch got on their case about it. But without a load of people complaining, we wouldn't be there.

   So keep complaining when you see or hear this kind of rubbish. Sometimes, it works.

5 comments:

  1. Heartening. I still think that media people in general are simply 'going with the flow' and paying merely lip-service to gender issues, and will make more slips like this if they relax their avowed intentions - and stay unchallenged. Thank you for picking them up on this instance.

    Lucy

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  2. I had an entertaining and illuminating conversation a week or so ago with a friend from my student radio days who's now someone with medium BBC radio visibility. He's gay, and very well versed in wider LGBT issues, and often finds himself battling these things from within the organisation, for all the LGBT alphabet soup. Some of it is ignorance, but a lot of it is unwillingness to believe that they are capable of getting it wrong. But it is slowly getting better, both from our side, and from his.

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  3. Keep plugging away, here is proof that it works. If you carry on we will soon be hearing you on P.M.!

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