Anecdotally, there’s been an increase in the number of complaints to the Australian Press Council about news articles describing people as “transgender”, and the tabloids aren’t happy.
This week, Nine.com.au and Daily Mail Australia were found to be in breach of the press council standard that says publications shouldn’t put undue emphasis on characteristics including gender.
Both websites reported in May last year on a manslaughter charge against Jade Walker, whose brother is Manly Sea Eagles rugby league player Dylan Walker. They both responded to the complaints by saying their references weren’t excessive or derogatory, and referred to her repeated public references on social media to being transgender.
But the council found that Walker’s status as transgender wasn’t relevant to the story, and “identifying her as such in the headline and again in the article could lead some readers to conclude that this characteristic was either the cause of, or a factor in, the alleged crime and could contribute to substantial prejudice against transgender people”.
Reacting to the council’s adjudications, Daily Mail Australia and News Corp’s news.com.au have claimed the complaints are part of a campaign to restrict the use of the word “transgender” in news reports entirely. The Australian has reported that interest group Rainbow Rights Watch has regularly lodged complaints with the Australian Press Council, and was also taking the council to the NSW Civil and Administrative Appeal Tribunal for not treating their complaints as favourably as others. Rainbow Rights Watch did not respond to Crikey’s request for comment.
News.com.au editor-in-chief Kate de Brito told Crikey via email that she’d noticed an increase in the number of complaints about the website’s use of the word, and that she currently had three still awaiting adjudication. One complaint last year was about a story from November 2016, which she said showed “someone was clearly searching for a reason to be offended”.
“We have had a flurry of complaints over the last three to four months and only one in the 12 months prior … This is the single topic that attracts the most complaints,” she said. “I don’t think they are frivolous, but I do believe they are part of a campaign by a small group to discourage the media from using the word transgender … Recognising this is a drain on us becomes a form of pseudo censorship with an interest group like this trying to wear down media organisations by tying them up in complaints. It definitely makes us reconsider even using the word transgender, but in the end we are serving our readers and the greater community and our job is to report facts.”
Daily Mail Australia’s managing director Peter Holder told The Australian on Wednesday that the council was “being held to ransom by a small but well-drilled group which appears to oppose any use of the ‘T word'”.
RMIT journalism senior lecturer Dr Alex Wake, whose research interests include gender and mental health, said there was increasing public awareness around transgender issues in Australia, and transgender groups were becoming more organised with formal lobbying.
“There’s also an increasing understanding among journalists in Australia and beyond that inappropriate use of gender descriptors do cause damage,” she said. “There’s a lot of evidence around about the need to ensure that trans people are not singled out for derision in the media. It can have a deadly impact on lives.”
She said that despite the editors’ protestations that they were just including “transgender” as a describer, or relevant fact, it contributed to stigma if it was just included as a “titillating” detail.
“Just in the same way it is derogatory to call someone a ‘woman journalist’ as opposed to a ‘journalist’, or a ‘woman doctor’ instead of a ‘doctor’, it’s derogatory to call someone a trans-something,” she said. “What’s the point, if not to single them out as different?”
The press council would not comment on specific cases or the number of complaints made about reports about transgender people, but a spokesperson told Crikey that the council was currently developing an advisory guideline that will deal with reporting on LGBTIQ-related issues, which will involve community and industry consultation, and will be completed in the next 12 to 18 months.
There seems to be a movement to avoid using ‘he’ or ‘she’ as the 3rd person singular pronoun, instead using the ‘singular they’ as the default pronoun, in order to avoid offending transgender or non-binary gender persons.
So the headline should have read ‘Sibling, 31, of football star has manslaughter charge DROPPED – after a post mortem found they did not cause the death of their older lover, 51.’
Absolutely clear. Not.
Not entirely.
Using ‘they’ is appropriate when the gender of the person being described is unknown.
For example, “Someone left their phone behind. I wonder if they are coming back to collect it or if I should take it to lost property.”
‘They’ is also appropriate when the person does not identify as either male or female – especially a transgender or intersex person
It’s perfectly fine to use the pronouns ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘her’ or ‘him’ when the person you are talking about uses these words for themselves and identifies as either male or female.
The headline, as I suggested it be modified in order to use the ‘singular they’ and to become politically correct becomes ambiguous. ‘Sibling, 31, of football star…found they…’ suggests that the sibling and the football star both were suspected of causing the death of a lover, and both were enamoured of the lover.
I’m not certain how you could avoid using ‘they’ in your example, besides the clumsy ‘someone left a phone behind. I wonder if he or she is coming back to collect it…’
“older lover, 51.’ Ageist. What has their age got to do with It?
well actually thats only true for non binary and gender fluid folk, then there is binary trans and all under the umbrella of transgender.
If Kate De Brito doesn’t want to be “tied up in complaints”, perhaps she should concentrate on improving her publication’s reporting standards, instead of complaining about the industry process her publication helped establish to uphold good media ethics.
Damned if you don’t mention trans now damned if you do. I get the prurience angle but can see how it seemed reasonable to note the person in the cited case. It is the tabloid press so hard to expect much.
But really it’s about power as always. People like to blather mealy mouthed tosh about wanting equality and recognition and acceptance of their group but soon revert to the usual human trait of wanting a bit more equality than others. Better to have it out and remind them of their typically human double standards than pander.
get real we dont have cis privilege. All we want is equality. You know a level playing feild. It isnt level yet. We still have forced sterilisation to stay married to our partners. We still suffer job and housing discrimination. Most of our medical requirements are not catered for. There are still places we cant go. I dont understand how you think we want more when we havent even reached equality. Its a cisgender world but we would like to share your same freedoms. So yeah i dont see how that is more. But it seems cis people like to have uninformed opinions about trans people. Did it ever occur to you to google or even better ask a trans person?
“…it is derogatory to call someone a ‘woman journalist’ as opposed to a ‘journalist’, or a ‘woman doctor’ instead of a ‘doctor,’” — OK for English. What happens in a language that cannot call someone a ‘journalist’ or a ‘doctor’ such as French or Italian, without using a gendered word because all the nouns are gendered?
“…a spokesperson told Crikey that the council was currently developing an advisory guideline that will deal with reporting on LGBTIQ-related issues, which will involve community and industry consultation, and will be completed in the next 12 to 18 months.”
The APC told the LGBTI community that it commenced work on these guidelines 18 months ago.
And it still has 18 months work in front of it? Really?
Looking at their other “Guidelines”, they seem to be a one-pager. How long does it honestly take?
Perhaps the industry self-regulation model is no longer working properly..
In the Benighted States during the 60s civil rights the radicals demanded the replacement of ‘coloured’ with ‘black’ (later ‘Black’) which has now moved on to ‘African America’.
Meanwhile the NAACP is still going strong and on the Hill the Black Congress caucus separately.
In Oz Aborigine became Aboriginal, grammar notwithstanding, and Michelle Guthrie, after her defenestration, was described in Cirkey as a woman of colour.
Not so much mutatis mutandi as a waste of everyone’s time and a dangerous diversion whilst the Right pisses itself laughing and carries on ripping us off.