A quiet assasination

The BBC erases a heroine from her own story

Lynne Pinches’ friends and fans celebrate the real winner of the Women's Champion of Champions tournament

My old employer, the BBC, has done it again. When it comes to staggering bias in the gender debate, many parts of it seem stuck in 2017. Its melodramatic interview with the guy who took the Women’s Champion of Champion’s pool title - because principled and fabulous Lynne Pinches withdrew - could have been copy-pasted straight from Pink News.

Harriet Haynes suffered ‘vile transphobic abuse’ the author wails. ‘She’ was ‘shocked’ Pinches forfeited their final. ‘She’ insists transgender ‘women’ (the BBC can’t bear to tell us they’re men) are not a threat to women’s pool. And ‘she’ has no ill feelings towards Lynne despite the abuse ‘she’ received on social media after the final.

How generous of him. Ruined a woman’s title hopes but forgives her for it.

Let me count the ways this was a spectacular breach of BBC guidelines.

First, the obvious. Why was this not an interview with Lynne Pinches, the woman who actually lost a title and a prize and suffered real abuse - rather than just being on the receiving end, as Harriet was, of a few well-chosen accuracies about biological sex and cheating? Because the BBC has no interest in the ‘lived experiences’ or ‘personal journeys’ of the women who lose out because of the arrogance of trans-identified men.

This is an even bigger miss when you take into account the fact that Lynne would have been the first woman in current competition in the UK to stage a boycott and speak without anonymity. What an opportunity. It remains to be seen whether BBC Wales or BBC Sport will take up Lynne’s public offer of an interview.

Without it, the bias by omission is extreme. If anybody raises this (maybe in a complaint, or an internal concern) they’ll be told not to worry, because ‘there’s balance across platforms and time’. But there never is. It’s a placation, rather than a promise. Every time I write these things, I want to be wrong. I want to see the BBC reach out and offer that balance. But BBC Wales turned down that opportunity.

Instead there are only quotations from a previous interview Lynne did with an opposing network. No right to reply for this story. Why? She’s not hard to track down: She’s right there on X. But in fact, in an extraordinary turn, Haynes in his own interview was given a right of reply to Lynne’s comments.

The article was of course also devoid of facts about male physical advantage, and the social conditions which lead to men being more likely to have vast experience of playing pool at grassroots. That would have meant directly challenging Haynes’ claims, would probably have rendered the entire interview rather pointless, and led to a tsunami of complaints from activists. Can't have that!

Let’s move on to the language. The reporter, Ian Hunt—whose byline was removed once people started noticing the quality of ‘journalism’ he’d produced— decided to refer to ‘male-born females’, and God knows what was going on in his head when he did so. Does he really think there’s such a thing as a female who was born male? What kind of brain fog produced this? He also thinks Harriet ‘transitioned to female’ ten years ago. No Ian - he didn’t. This is activist language. The BBC tells its journalists that they shouldn’t adopt activist language as their own .

In an unacknowledged update by lunchtime, quotes were inserted from Fair Play for Women (three cheers for them) and the phrase ‘male-born women’ was replaced with ‘transgender women’ - which is also inaccurate but at least follows the Style Guide. (Does it need to be said that the Style Guide needs refreshing? It’s well out of date. The language inserted by transactivists back in 2013 is looking extremely creaky in the face of a roiling controversy and election issue. )

The process for getting this content on the website differed from the usual sports content produced in Salford. Although it originated in Wales, it ended up on the Sport website, which suggests it would have received approval from the Sport department. It likely underwent review by an LGBT adviser and received the typical higher-level editorial oversight, considering it falls under the 'gender' category. Gender reports always attract extra eyeballs, but the additional scrutiny seems to do nothing except block accurate reporting and amplify the claims of activists. This is where it starts to look like propaganda.

What has failed to trickle down to journalists at BBC Wales is that the tenor of its coverage has to change, and that unalloyed, unchallenged sympathy for trans-identified males in women’s spaces and events is no longer tolerated.

So, was this primarily a failure on the part of BBC Wales or BBC Sport? The story may have Welsh roots but that doesn’t BBC Sport's leadership from responsibility -- after all, it went to Salford, and was published with the imprimatur of The BBC Sport website. This happened on the watch of Editor of Wales Sport, Carolyn Hitt and Salford Sport Editor, Steve Mawhinney. Hitt should never have allowed this to leave Cardiff without severe revisions. Steve’s had this raised with him many times, definitely by me but I’m sure not only by me. And BBC Wales and Cymru Directors Rhuanedd Richards and Rhodri Talfan Davies have also been challenged about it.

Richards told me 18 months ago, after another immensely biased programming decision, that there would be a conversation about ‘taking steps to ensure that we deal with challenging issues in future in a way which is consistent with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines’.

‘We cannot become fearful of tackling controversial or sensitive issues,’ she said. ‘We just need to do so with care’.

\We can all see how that's working out.

These editors know there’s a problem. They’ve known for months - years. Have they been genuine in their reassurances? I don’t know which is preferable - either they were not in the least genuine, or they’ve lost control of activists on their teams.

In any case, considering the salaries they receive, it's a fail.

Do I feel sorry for Ian Hunt, who’s probably going through it in the office right now? Not so much. But the people who bear the real responsibility are way above him. They should be saying to their journalists - ‘do this properly and we’ve got your back, whatever the gender activists throw at you’. They’re still too craven to do so, and in not doing so, they are hanging their frontline journalists out to dry.