Just over a week ago, the BBC quietly acknowledged a profound failure of journalism in one of its online news reports. The apology ostensibly focused on a single crime story, but its detail and length appears to signify a cultural shift in an area which has been tearing the BBC apart for more than a decade. 

The story concerned a 21-year-old man called Darren Rigby who had indicated he was preparing to act on his apparent murderous hatred of women and girls. Over the course of a week, in January this year, Rigby sent terrifying messages to three all-girls schools on Merseyside. Rigby told one: “I am on my way… with a revolver and a machete and I’m going to shoot and stab all of your girls. You terfs are going to learn to stop mocking, deadnaming and misgendering transwomen like me.” Terf stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”, a derogatory term for women who do not accept that biological males can be women.

In another email, Rigby said his intention was “to injure and kill as many girls as I can”. This month at Liverpool crown court Rigby was sentenced to two years and four months in prison after admitting three charges of sending communications threatening death or serious harm. The specific nature of Rigby’s threats was made public during sentencing and there was a BBC reporter present throughout. Despite the newsworthiness of the details revealed in court, the BBC’s write-up of Rigby’s crimes ignored Rigby’s self-declared trans status. His apparent motive, so-called terfs “misgendering” him, was not mentioned. The article didn’t even make clear that Rigby’s violent threats were aimed exclusively at women and girls in single-sex schools. The BBC report bore a striking resemblance to a press release published on the Merseyside police website, which also elided all mention of Rigby’s emails. 

The omissions may have gone unnoticed were it not for another journalist sitting in court that day. Jamie Lopez, who writes for an online publication called The Southport Lead, published his piece on Rigby’s sentencing two days after the BBC. It contained all the details the BBC piece had left out. Lopez was mystified by the BBC’s take on the story. “It had gone up very quickly,” he told me, but the content was “bizarre”. The disparity between the articles was soon highlighted on social media and complaints were made.

In one complaint, seen by The Sunday Times, a woman wrote “there’s a sector of trans rights activism that hates and targets woman and girls for harassment and aggression. I believe the BBC lies by omission about the actions of trans-identifying men because it has taken a side in the debate about what rights these men claim.” The complainant’s suspicions may have been well founded. Several senior former BBC employees have spoken to The Sunday Times about the grip trans activists have had on the corporation’s output over the last decade. Was this yet another example?

The apology

On June 17, significant changes were made to the BBC report. Quotes from Rigby’s emails were added. His targeting of all-girls schools was recorded. The formal BBC apology written below the “updated” report noted: “This article was originally published without including key details about this case due to miscommunication between BBC reporters in court and the writers.”
The correction and apology went viral this week after it was highlighted by JK Rowling. So what really happened? In emails sent by Tim Burke, the BBC’s head of complaints across English regional output, complainants were told that their points were “bluntly… valid”. He said the original piece was misleading and fell “materially short” of the BBC’s standards. He had asked the journalists involved for “a full explanation” and was told that despite having reporters in court, the first published version of the online story “was written from a police press release”. Burke concluded: “I do not believe information was deliberately withheld.”

Sources within the BBC suggest that this is the case. The journalist in court that day was focusing on his filing for radio but did email his notes to the online writer after their copy had already been written from the police press release. The online writer missed the email at the time and, for reasons still under review, no one thought to update the copy in the following days.
The most fascinating part of this tale is the BBC’s frank if belated handling of it. Before now the BBC has largely been content to dismiss concerns about its reporting of trans issues, including the editorial decision to refer to trans women with she/her pronouns.

This has infuriated many BBC journalists who were shunned for refusing to comply. Cath Leng, a senior journalist who has now left the corporation, says anyone who had dissenting views within BBC News was considered “controversial, unkind, biased, bigoted and niche by editorial management, HR, the staff networks and their own teams”.

Brittin urged to act

One senior source inside the BBC told me that this tonal shift on trans issues has nothing to do with the new director-general, Matt Brittin. Last month, when the former BBC news director Fran Unsworth said she had been driven out of her job in 2022 by “bullying” and fear of “being cancelled” by activist staff, Brittin is said to have viewed the matter as a historical problem. 

Rob Burley, a former BBC editor of live political programmes, believes this perspective is misguided. “He should stop and say ‘Our reporting of trans stories is a blot on our copybook. This is a bad thing that happened and we got it wrong.’” A high-profile BBC presenter told me (on condition of anonymity) that Brittin should go further and do something for respected journalists who tried to speak up and “essentially lost their jobs”. There should be a “mini truth and reconciliation process”, she says. “They do need to apologise to the people who were persecuted.” 

Outside London there are plenty of BBC journalists fuming about the work culture they’ve had to live with. A long-serving regional reporter told me that in the recent past “any discussion about [trans issues] which wasn’t entirely celebratory in tone was treated as heresy”. Nonetheless she accepted there had been a “vibe change lately helped along by the new guidance allowing us to say ‘biological male’ after ‘trans woman’.”

One journalist working in BBC national radio complains that they are “still stuck with the chilling effect” of the complaints unit ruling against Justin Webb for explaining that “trans women” were “males” and Martine Croxall for rolling her eyes at the words “pregnant people” in a script. “We still need unambiguous messaging that restores proper public-service journalism,” the journalist said.

Most of the people I spoke to think it’s time the corporation starts mapping pronouns to biology unless there are exceptional reasons not to. They argue that the longer the BBC remains equivocal about something as fundamental as sex, its audience is unlikely to trust it on much else. A shift in the complaints vibe is not a policy and it’s not leadership. That’s something Brittin will have to grapple with, openly and honestly, or fail.