Whither Ofcom?

On October 1st, I posted a message to my followers on Twitter and Mastodon, asking my trans and LGBTQ+ followers if anyone has ever written to Ofcom - the regulator for TV and radio in the UK - asking them for justification for allowing our right-wing 'news' channels - GB News and TalkTV - to get away with their constant agitprop against groups protected under the Equality Act 2010, and how they are acting in any way 'balanced', and not 'targeting' these groups? You can find a few in-depth blogs I've written related to this, with fuller context.

Having received some favourable responses, later that day I put my money where my mouth is (without ever saying so online) and spent quite a long time typing out a 'complaint' off the top of my head on the Ofcom website. I didn't actually want to complain, as I know Ofcom are protecting these channels and their output, either for fear of their audiences, or because they like it, or someone above is telling them to. But on their website, I couldn't just inquire as to why they were aiding them in their mission by waving their content through, despite it blatantly failing to meet its requirements for news-related content. The first problem I found when using their channel license section was they really wanted to know what rules I believed they were in breach of. Which is fine if you have time to read through, and can understand between the lines of those rules, but no guarantee of getting it right. And as you will see, if they don't believe your complaint doesn't "fall within the remit of (Ofcom's) 'general procedures for investigating breaches of broadcast licenses'" then they won't even reply to you, but they will "log" it, which is nice I guess.

Below will be the email version of the text I included in the 'complaint'. I will not add any direct links and sources to the text in this blog post, although as you will see, I offered to share my 'observations' from my blog posts if they wanted that - as I didn't want to be immediately denied as some obsessive. All programmes could at the time, and likely still are, be found on the respective channels' YouTube pages, so you can also go and verify and decide for yourself. Some of the GB News stuff I have blogged about here before too, so you can find even more details on that if you want to go and read more from me.

"This complaint applies to any date of both channels since their launch to the current date.

I believe that both the aforementioned news channels [GB News and TalkTV] are fundamentally failing, and deliberately so, on giving due impartiality and balance in their discussion and debate of transgender rights and existence, both medically and in society, against a 'protected group' as defined in the Equality Act 2010, and having read the Broadcasting Code, of parts of sections 2, 3 and 5.

From the launch to today, both channels have engaged in - in my opinion - wilful and targeted attacks against transgender, and more wider LGBTQ+ people generally, and their mere existence as people. As someone who has taken a keen eye on what these self-stated 'trend setters' are trying to promote through their airwaves, I have seen over the past 2 1/2 years since GB News's launch, how these channels over-emphasise the number, importance and threat of trans people who seek to be affirmed in their self, in both the UK and the world, as part of their ideological worldview they seek to promote.

For a group of people that is roughly 0.5% of the UK population - as tallied in the Census of England and Wales of 2021, you can pick a random time to turn to either one of these channels, and the chance of them at the moment either discussing trans people in a negative way, through rhetoric, 'jokes', and other jibes, such as their fondness for worrying if a person has a penis or not, or even indirectly slipped in to seemingly unrelated topics, is many times that percentage.

Having little time to find out true values myself - unlike what the regulator of these channels should have to do themselves - I scanned through one show I knew dramatically inflates the 'problems' with trans people being permitted to exist as who they identify as.

GB News's 'Free Speech Nation' hosted by Andrew Doyle, consistently runs anti-trans views, with the only plausible reason to agitate its viewers through incessant rabble-rousing to join them. Having scanned through the VoD [on YouTube] of the January 29th 2023 episode, anti-trans segments took up over 37 minutes of the 1 hour, 21 minute length of the show (minus adverts). That was over 46% of the show's run-time, a massive disconnect to the 0.5% of the population. Additionally the 9th October 2022 episode they took up 33 1/2 minutes of the 1 hour, 45 minute length, for 32% of the run-time.

And these are just the two I wrote about on my blog to emphasise my point. I know that you could pick pretty much every episode of this one show, and you would have multiple anti-trans segments. For example, at the time of me writing this blog, the show's YouTube playlist had anti-trans segments taking up around 10% of the list. I can forward my blog to you if you are interested.

But it is not this show where it happens. Whilst other shows on the channel may have it happen less, I can tell you from my random times I've switched over (sometimes more than once a day), I have never seen them do a segment that is in any way 'pro-trans'. I can not see how GB News as a channel can be fulfilling the Broadcasting Code for due impartiality and balance on this issue.

That also extends to TalkTV too, where albeit you can theoretically get on air via text, email or on the telephone, the channel still holds the option whether to put your opposing view on air, and still controls the majority of the time to promote whatever it wishes to. For example, Julia Hartley-Brewer's Breakfast Show has regularly an anti-trans segment which allows someone within that sphere free reign without any real push back to say whatever they want about trans people - in my opinion, to paint them as an 'evil threat' - including misgendering them and delegitimising their whole existence as little more than a 'mental disorder'.

That is something that would have been so far outside of the norm until around 2019/2020 when it was imported from similar rhetoric in the United States, as shown by the Equality Act being from 2010, with few issues or great public hysteria raised at the time or in the intervening years.

A recent example of this for TalkTV was the September 23rd 2023 episode of 'Saturday Night Talkaway', where for 25 minutes straight the show ran anti-trans discourse - firstly over the supposed 'Braun Scandal', due to them using a post-op trans man in an advert, which involved the two right-wing hosts and their guest from an anti-trans organisation, and then secondly, through interviewing 'detransitioner' Chloe Cole, who has turned into an anti-medicalisation advocate, which ended with a glowing recommendation by the hosts of their work. This is the same show that a few weeks earlier, well-known trans woman Katy Montgomerie went on to 'defend' the Mermaids charity trying to strip the 'LGB Alliance' organisation of their charitable status, which ended up resulting in a pile-on towards her online - including by two current and former GB News pundits.

That is a rare event though on this channel to have a trans-positive person on, and whilst is more than the other channel, is in my opinion no where near a realistic weighting of 'both sides' of the argument. The attempted stripping of rights from a group should not, again in my opinion, ever hold the vast majority of time on a supposed 'news' channel.

One final note that prompted me to forward this to you was the latest edition of 'That Was The Woke That Was' broadcast on September 30th 2023. This is another show hosted by André Walker, and in my opinion alone, should be looked into for the 'balance' test given it always has five (or occasionally four, with a supposed 'moderate') right-wing pundits and/or activists. However, for this complaint, during one of the many anti-trans segments this show has also put out, one of the guests stated that gay people have allowed trans people to 'hijack' their community. This phrase is a commonly heard wedge promoted by this ecosystem, but is patently false.

As was discovered in a July 2023 YouGov poll, only 3% of LGBTQ+ Brits use the trans-exclusionary 'LGB' term to describe our shared community. There is no 'division' other than in the minds of the ecosystem these channels promote.

There can also be no doubt that this message is being done to delegitimise both trans and LGB rights and existence, and is working out well, given an August YouGov poll, which found 25% had negative views, up from 16% in only 2021. The incessant, never-ending, and completely out-of-balance time these channels take up to 'discuss' and 'debate' trans people is not an organic reflection of the reality of 'political discourse'. Nor when you take a look at it overall, whether by show or by channel, in any way 'fair' and 'unbiased'.

Finally, whilst I am pleased to see Ofcom finally taken a look into GB News's output, following the alleged scandal involving Dan Wootton, Laurence Fox and Ava Evans, I am extremely disappointed and concerned that the regulator has chosen to seemingly ignore questions on the content and how it is skewed, since these channels have launched. For example, I have personally heard those now suspended by that channel - including Calvin Robinson - use very similar, grotesque and dehumanising, language against other groups of people, including but not limited to LGBTQ+ people, during their time on air, however despite knowing that complaints have been made on occasions, no real vigour to investigate has been shown on your part to reflect the concern of what they are doing to 'news' and 'balanced journalism'.

I have no real issue - albeit slightly confused given both gay and trans people being equal were a 'settled issue' - in honest discussion of us, but that is something that neither of these channels are both doing on air, or setting out to do given their stated goals as a part of a wider global ecosystem.

And I think that as a regulator, you should be much more proactive in monitoring that.

Thank you for reading, and your time."

And that was that. And three months on, you will no doubt be unsurprised to read that I received no reply. No investigations will happen. Not even "considered carefully" only to be rejected later on.

I tried but I failed. Perhaps tried badly, I don't know, and maybe looking at the licenses section was biting off too much. Maybe if I just sent in a detailed complaint about one or two programmes, I'd have achieved more. But what else can you say to the systematic and channel-wide constant derision and rhetoric.

And I also didn't expect anything else from Ofcom anyway. If the regulator is this opaque in its openness to approach by the wider public to concerns of such widespread approach and attitude, then we're really on our own in a 'Wild West' - with no end in sight to it.