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More from @shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 29

The head of the @BBC says it will “Pursue the truth with no agenda by reporting fearlessly & fairly.” But, according to current & former BBC journalists, the BBC is suppressing the truth about "gender-affirming care," mislabeling men as women, and failing to safeguard children.

Bullying, Cowardice, And Careerism Behind BBC Disinformation On Gender

Current and former BBC journalists condemn the British media giant for corruption of language and failing to safeguard children and vulnerable adults

by @shellenberger
Tim Davie (left) Director-General of BBC (Getty Images)

The highest purpose of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is to “Pursue the truth with no agenda,” said its Director-General, Tim Davie, last week. BBC would do this “by reporting fearlessly and fairly.” In his speech, “A BBC For the Future,” Davie added that “Disinformation, propaganda, and partial news is [sic] weakening our shared understanding of the world, undermining trust in our institutions and our democratic process.”

To combat this disinformation, the BBC launched a special initiative, “BBC Verify,” last year. Last week, the BBC released a 9-page report to reporters that required a “careful and accurate use of language” regarding gender.

But according to current and former BBC journalists, the BBC itself is spreading disinformation, failing to pursue the truth without regard to any agenda, and behaving fearfully and unfairly on issues relating to transgenderism.

Three days before Davie gave his speech, The Times of London reportedthat BBC had buried a large package of investigative stories on the problems with giving children and adolescents puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in an effort to change their sex or gender. Former BBC journalist Hannah Barnes said, “The BBC didn’t really back our work at all.”

It’s true that BBC ran part of Barnes’s article. She told the Times that it “wasn’t blocked.” Barnes went on to write a book, Time To Think, based in part on her reporting, which started at BBC. And in 2020, the BBC, after facing criticism, stopped working with a transgender advocacy group.

But Barnes told the Times, “There’s a really big difference [between running a story and properly projecting it].” Her documentary films “weren’t promoted across the BBC. It wasn’t like Panorama. You didn’t hear it on the news bulletins. You didn’t see it on the Six or the Ten [O’Clock News].”

And BBC buried a major part of her story, said Barnes. She had learned that the medical director of Britain’s main gender clinic, Tavistock, had “failed to mention a number of safeguarding concerns raised by [gender clinic] Gids staff in a review he had published of the service.”

The Times of London described Barnes’ scoop as “a turning point in the story: a revelation that prompted the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to conduct its own review, in which Gids would ultimately be rated ‘inadequate.’” The Times reported that none of it ran. Said Barnes, “It wasn’t anywhere on the BBC. The online piece was so buried that even though I had written it, I couldn’t find it.”

And two years after distancing itself from one trans activist group, in 2022, BBC gave seed funding directly to another group, “All About Trans.”

In response to our questions, a BBC spokesperson told Public, “The BBC is committed to reporting all stories impartially, in accordance with its publicly available editorial guidelines.” The BBC spokesperson referred us to BBC editorial guidelines, an article in Dateline about the 9-page reporting guide, and the transcript of testimony given by Davie and two other BBC executives to a parliamentary committee.”

For years, the BBC’s decision to refer to trans-identified men as “women” has inspired controversy. In 2022, BBC changed the pronouns of a trans-identified male attacker. The Times of London reported at the time that “The woman referred to her alleged rapist as ‘him’ but [BBC] insiders said that her words were changed to avoid ‘misgendering’ the abuser in an article on the corporation’s website.” BBC has, on several other occasions, referred to male rapists and male sexual predators of children using female pronouns

A male suspect of child pornography mis-identified by BBC as a woman.📷
The BBC Style guide requires BBC employees to use female pronouns with “a person born male who lives as a female… We generally use the term and pronoun preferred by the person in question unless there are editorial reasons not to do so.”

Barnes isn’t the only former BBC reporter to level concerns at BBC for bias. “The BBC is telling its journalists to lie about a person’s sex under almost all circumstances if the person requests it,” wrote Cath Walton, who worked at BBC for 25 years before leaving in 2023.

“How is a presenter or reporter to explain why there is a controversy at all about trans-identified men in, say, women’s sports or prisons if they are unable to say that they are male?” Walton asked. “It should be a requirement, not a punishable offense.”

And now, yet another BBC journalist has decided to speak out publicly and has even agreed to record a podcast interview, below...

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1773806580343148748?s=20

Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative reporting, read the rest of the article, and listen to the podcast with the BBC reporter who is speaking out.

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1773806580343148748?s=20

Read 4 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 26

https://twitter.com/jakubsimek/status/1772381321467138370

You are not crazy, you are right: elites across the West are imposing a crackdown on speech. They have weaponized intelligence and security agencies. The news media are helping them. But they will lose in Ireland and could lose elsewhere. We will support your fight for freedom.

https://twitter.com/jakubsimek/status/1772381321467138370

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1752126861998715244

They are cracking down in Germany…

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1752126861998715244

The same characters are attacking free speech in Brazil:

public.substack.com/p/fbi-soros-an…

Read 8 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 24

We should trust @BBC to fight misinformation, it says. But we shouldn't. Last year it spread false information about hate speech, Nigel Farage, and Israel-Gaza. Now, a former BBC reporter says it killed a major story about the coverup of medical mistreatment of gender confusion.

The former BBC reporter @hannahsbee went on to write a book, "A Time To Think," about the scandal of giving drugs and surgeries to gender-confused kids. Last year, her book was short-listed for the prestigious "Orwell Prize."

amazon.com/Time-Think-Col…

Here's what happened, as reported in The Times Of London, today:

Barnes "was editing [BBC flagship program] Newsnight on the night she revealed that the [gender clinic hospital] Tavistock trust’s medical director, Dr Dinesh Sinha, had failed to mention a number of safeguarding concerns raised by [gender clinic] Gids staff in a review he had published of the service.

"It was a turning point in the story: a revelation that prompted the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to conduct its own review, in which Gids would ultimately be rated 'inadequate.' Barnes had worked a 16-hour shift, editing the package down so that the story could air on the various news bulletins. None of it ran. 'It wasn’t anywhere on the BBC. The online piece was so buried that even though I had written it, I couldn’t find it.'"

Read 5 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 23

For years, experts said we should give drugs and surgeries to kids confused about their gender. Given the sterility, loss of sexual function, and regret, that's been changing. Now, a French Senate report calls it “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine."

"Maud Vasselle, a mother whose daughter underwent gender transition treatment, told Le Figaro: 'A child is not old enough to ask to have her body altered.

"'My daughter just needed the certificate of a psychiatrist, which she obtained after a one-hour consultation. But doctors don’t explain the consequences of puberty blockers,' she added.

“'My daughter didn’t realise that life wasn’t going to be so easy with all these treatments... She was a brilliant little girl but now she’s failing at school. And she is far from having found the solution to her problems.'"

telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1764799914918490287?s=20

The French Senate report comes in the wake of leaked WPATH Files, which show that "gender medicine" doctors, therapists, and activists know they're causing harm and not getting informed consent from their victims.

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1764799914918490287?s=20

Read 9 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 19

Victory! Quack trans group @WPATH has deleted its pseudoscientific "Standards of Care v8" from its website!

This comes two weeks after the release of the WPATH Files, which revealed widespread medical mistreatment and fraud

WPATH yesterday:

WPATH today:
h/t @Janedoeordont

WPATH may also have removed its president, Marci Bowers.

Here's WPATH's website yesterday:

Here's WPATH's web site today:

Everyone from the New York Times to the American Medical Association has, for years, relied on WPATH. Neither @NYT nor @AmerMedicalAssn has responded to the WPATH Files, despite growing evidence that "gender medicine" is the largest medical mistreatment scandal in history.

Read 13 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 18

The Internet means we should rethink the First Amendment, say the media. But it doesn't. Telegraphs, radio, and TV didn't require restricting free speech. There's something wrong with anyone so intolerant of their fellow citizens that they want the government to censor them.

Jeff Kosseff: "Hey, Let's Not Rethink The First Amendment"

Leading free speech scholar pushes back against widespread claim that "peer-to-peer misinformation" on the Internet justifies government censorship

by @shellenberger

Many journalists, university professors, and Democrats say we must change how we think about the First Amendment for the Internet age. Maybe the government had no role in regulating speech before there existed social media platforms like X and Facebook, where “peer-to-peer misinformation” thrives. But now, given the threat such misinformation poses to democracy, we need the government to restrict what can be said on the Internet, claim Stanford researchers, the New York Times, and the Biden administration.

All of that is dangerous nonsense, according to Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and author of a new book, Liar In A Crowded Theater. “Starting about a century ago,” he told me in a new podcast, “the Supreme Court gradually developed robust [free speech] protections for all but a handful of exceptions…. And I think that, for the Internet, it needs to be the same, where we start off with the premise that this speech is not subject to regulation.”

Kosseff recognizes the Internet’s massive impact and the limits to freedom of speech. “I think, obviously, you need to have some somewhat different rules to make [the First Amendment] make sense on the Internet,” he explains. “And you can't [for example] lie in court and then say, ‘My rights are protected by the First Amendment.’”

However, the Supreme Court already ruled in Reno v. ACLU in 1997 that the First Amendment applied to speech on the Internet. After the Communications Decency Act passed in 1996, an aspect of it was challenged as unconstitutional. “The government's defense of it was, ‘Well, the Internet is not really like your average speech.' You don't get the full scope of First Amendment protections for the Internet. Instead, you get lesser protections, kind of like you get for radio and TV because the FCC can regulate cursing and pornography.’

“The Supreme Court very soundly and clearly rejected that. It said, ‘No, the Internet is not like broadcast because broadcast has scarce spectrum that has to be regulated by the government. The Internet is this new medium. ' It's a beautiful opinion. Justice Stevens wrote it, and most of it was joined by all of the justices. There were two minor dissents. I think that principle needs to carry on.”

I wanted to interview Kosseff before tomorrow’s Supreme Court hearing on Murthy v. Missouri, a potentially landmark First Amendment case involving government demands for online censorship....