(with apologies to New Order)

Is it really such a sin
‘Cause if it is then I’ll give in

So, has the BBC been “attacking trans people”? Has the BBC “quite consciously set out to demean and belittle trans people”? Well, yes it has, according to Jolyon Maugham KC and his never knowingly understated Good Lie Project.

On 14 November, Jolyon and the GLP launched a new campaign, in which supporters are urged to “hold the BBC to account” by using the GLP’s data harvesting tool to send an email to Jonathan Munro, deputy chief executive of BBC News, demanding that the BBC “stop its attacks [sic] on trans people”. And, to date, more than 3,800 midwits have done so. Their emails to Mr Munro state:

When trans people are under attack as never before, the BBC’s attack on the trans community amplifies hate, supports misinformation, and helps fuel discrimination.

The BBC is failing in the duty set out by your Charter to “provide impartial news”. I demand an urgent and open review of your editorial guidelines on trans issues.

But, where is the evidence of the BBC’s “morally contemptible” attack – or “attacks” – on trans people? I don’t watch much television, myself, but I’ve certainly not seen much evidence of the BBC “demeaning and belittling trans people”. Have you?

The more than 3,800 emails sent to Jonathan Munro assert that “the evidence is clear”. But it turns out the only evidence of the BBC’s attack – or attacks – on trans people and the trans community is that the BBC declined the GLP’s offer of an ‘exclusive’ on a poll of ‘trans people’, commissioned by the GLP from pollsters YouGov, supposedly showing “how trans people in Britain are living in fear and have lost faith in key public institutions”.

The GLP first published (some of) the findings of the YouGov poll, conducted earlier this year, on 23 October, the last day of the Labour Party’s deputy leadership election. That GLP news item revealed that 91% of those surveyed by YouGov for the GLP said they “trust Labour with trans rights either ‘not very much’ or ‘not at all’, putting the party only five points ahead of the Tories at 96%”. 

The GLP news item also revealed the YouGov poll’s findings that “just 25% of trans adults trust the police, and only 31% trust judges and the legal system”, but did not mention the poll’s similar finding that ‘only’ 33% of those surveyed by YouGov trust the BBC. Jolyon himself simply noted that:

Labour knows the jeopardy trans people endure. Before the election it promised to ‘remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition and acceptance’. But in government it has lined up alongside the Tories and Reform UK at the cruelty Olympics. 

Four days later, on 27 October, the GLP published a second news item on the YouGov poll, claiming that the poll findings reveal “a devastating humanitarian crisis” in the UK, with trans people living in “abject terror”of being “harassed, outed, and discriminated against”. The news item reiterated the poll’s findings that “just 25% of trans people trust the police, and only 31% trust judges and the legal system”, but again made no mention of the BBC. 

However, early the following morning, Jolyon took to social media to complain that:

We tried to place this story – very expensive polling, the first of its kind, strong quantitative data about what trans people feel about Britain: bluntly there is no better way to tell the story – with the BBC, but it said it was ‘too weak’. But it will pick up any old piece of trans-hating garbage.

In short, the only ‘evidence’ offered by the GLP in support of their bold assertion that the BBC has “quite consciously set out to demean and belittle trans people” is that the BBC – which Jolyon has accused of being “racist” as well as transphobic – declined the GLP’s offer of an exclusive on the poll that the GLP expensively commissioned from YouGov. And, in those 3,800 emails to Jonathan Munro, the proportion of survey respondents who said they trust the BBC has magically shrunk from 33% to 30%:

The evidence is clear. A recent YouGov survey shows 70% of trans people feel BBC News takes a hostile stance when reporting on trans issues.

However, none of those surveyed by YouGov were asked whether they ‘feel’ that BBC News “takes a hostile stance when reporting on trans issues”. The (surprisingly leading) question asked by YouGov in their survey was simply: “How much, if at all, do you trust the BBC?”

Quite why the GLP chose to offer an ‘exclusive’ to a media outlet that Jolyon has long considered to be transphobic, as well as racist, is a bit of a mystery. Maybe Jolyon thought the ‘racist and transphobic’ BBC would be keen to headline the YouGov finding that only 33% of ‘trans people’ trust the BBC. But the BBC was certainly right to reject the YouGov survey as “too weak” – because the survey’s methodology was not just very weak, but fundamentally flawed, for three reasons.

Firstly, and most importantly, the sampling used to create the unweighted sample group of 457 people was rubbish. YouGov have confirmed to me that the survey was conducted online among members of their existing ‘proprietary panel’ who had “previously indicated they were transgender or non-binary”. However, of the 457 members of the panel who responded, 338 (74%) are not actually trans as such – they simply “identify” as non-binary (whatever that means), have a Difference of Sexual Development (DSD), which YouGov wrongly label as “intersex”, or are somehow ‘Other’.

YouGov were unable to provide me with any examples of a ‘gender identity’ they would classify as ‘other than trans, non-binary, or having a DSD’. Whatever, there is simply no good reason why someone who merely identifies as ‘non-binary’, or who has a DSD, or who identifies as, say, caelgender should particularly mistrust the police, judges and the BBC, let alone be living in “abject terror”. Arguably, there has never been a better time in human history to label yourself ‘non-binary’, because some people will actually take you seriously, rather than laughing and telling you to ‘get over yourself’.

But then, if you ask a self-selecting group “How much, if at all, do you trust the police/judges/the BBC?”, you are telling them how you expect them to answer. That ‘if at all’ is completely unnecessary, when the respondents had to select their answer from a limited list of fixed options ranging from ‘a lot’ to ‘not at all’. As one might expect (expensive) pollsters like YouGov to know, they were asking a leading question. And, to see that, all you have to do is wonder whether YouGov would have asked “How much, if at all, do you distrust the police/judges/the BBC?”.

Finally, when I asked YouGov to clarify the statistical or other basis on which they assigned near equal weight (151/153/153) to “Trans woman”, “Trans man” and “Non-binary, Intersex, Other” in the weighted sample (see image above), they told me “the proportions were based on those providing write-in answers in the 2021 Census”.

But, again as one might expect (expensive) pollsters to know, in September 2024 those answers in the 2021 Census were stripped of their accredited status, after an investigation by the Office of National Statistics found that too many people had misunderstood the Census question. In other words, those write-in answers to the 2021 Census question are unreliable, because the question was fundamentally flawed.

So, was it such a sin for the BBC to reject the GLP’s offer of an exclusive on the YouGov survey? Does that rejection alone merit the GLP’s new campaign and the sending of 3,800 emails to Jonathan Munro demanding that the BBC “stop its attacks on trans people”?

Or are those ‘attacks’ all in Jolyon ‘angry dad’ Maugham KC’s angry head?