Mick Hartley

On the BBC’s celebration of transified men in women’s sport, from the Telegraph:

BBC bosses “ignored” warnings about pro-transgender bias in its sports coverage, The Telegraph can reveal.

Messages seen by The Telegraph reveal that female staff repeatedly raised concerns over several years about the nature of reporting on gender issues.

BBC Sport bosses were told almost five years ago that stories about trans athletes were often uncritical and celebratory “puff pieces”, while glossing over any potentially negative impact on women’s sports.

However, insiders claim that the BBC persisted with overwhelmingly positive coverage of otherwise controversial athletes, including Lia Thomas, the biologically male swimmer, the weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, the cyclist Austin Killips and Imane Khelif, the boxer.

Concerns were also raised about biologically male athletes who were referred to as transgender “females”, a practice that appeared to confuse sex for gender and to go against the BBC’s own style guide.

BBC staff have reported feeling ignored and feeling unable to voice opinions that went against the prevailing orthodoxy of affirming transgender identity.

The reporting on this subject is always presented as though trans people were generically being banned from participating in sport, when of course what’s being banned is men competing in women’s sport. More people, happily, are now getting this. No thanks to the BBC.

BBC Sport is currently led by Alex Kay-Jelski, who faced criticism for a column he wrote for The Times in 2019 while he was the newspaper’s sports editor.

In the piece, he wrote that Martina Navratilova, the nine-time Wimbledon champion, and the Olympic swimming medallist Sharron Davies, both vocal opponents of allowing biological males to compete in women’s categories, were “not experts” on the matter of trans participation in sport.

Mr Kay-Jelski appeared to compare those who portrayed trans athletes as being “threatening” to racists who warned, “Don’t let black men in the same shops as you or they’ll rape your women”.

Will Mr Kay-Jelski now resign – or be sacked?