The ABC has stood firmly behind a Media Watch segment covering the columnist Julie Szego’s sacking from The Age, which a string of LGBTQIA+ and human rights organisations have branded as inaccurate.
The segment, which went to air on Monday, introduced Szego as an Age journalist of almost 25 years. Host Paul Barry told viewers the columnist had been “cancelled” after a row “about a news piece” she’d written for the paper. The piece was some 5000 words long on gender transitioning among children.
“[It] includes growing doubts among doctors in the UK, Scandinavia, France and Spain, over the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones,” Barry said, before cutting to excerpts of an interview with Szego. “To me, the article seemed cautious and considered, and certainly newsworthy.”
In an open letter to the ABC this week, however, a number of organisations including Amnesty International, the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union and the Trans Justice Project charged the broadcaster with omitting broad medical consensus around gender-affirming care, including from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the American Medical Association.
The letter called for an on-air apology for the “lack of care” taken to ensure accuracy and fairness, as well as for the ABC to commit to engaging with trans and gender-diverse leaders for future stories.
The organisations also claimed the Media Watch segment failed to acknowledge that the original article that led to Szego’s sacking contained references to fringe conspiracy theories and links to known anti-trans misinformation groups.
One of the organisations referenced in Szego’s story, now published on online platform Substack, was the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, otherwise known as SEGM. In April last year, the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine described SEGM as an “ideological organization without apparent ties to mainstream scientific or professional organizations”.
Trans Justice Project director Jackie Turner said that beyond inaccuracy, the Media Watch framing lacked due scrutiny and runs the risk of legitimising coordinated misinformation campaigns, as is seen in the UK and the US.
“So disinformation of this kind is being used by anti-trans lobbyists to attack our rights, lives and access to gender-affirming health care,” Turner told Crikey. “It’s really important that in an environment that’s increasingly hostile to LGBT people, overall, the media are engaging in an accurate and fair way.”
Still, the ABC maintains the segment was fair and balanced. Media Watch executive producer Tim Latham told Crikey that the show stands by its story and the importance of airing “differing points of view”.
“It was a fair and balanced account including plenty of criticism of Ms Szego, her article and her views and it offered significant airtime to the counterpoints,” Latham said.
“Media Watch invited the director of the Trans Justice Project Jackie Turner to comment for the segment in which she disputed the accuracy of Szego’s article and called many of her sources ‘ideological, misleading, or explicitly anti LGBTQIA+’.”
He pointed to the three statements provided to Media Watch, which were published on the ABC’s website in full for audiences to read. The statements included comments from trans rights activist and writer Natalie Feliks, who called Szego’s article “misinformed, propaganda and lies”, as well as Patrick Elligett, editor of The Age.
In her statement to Media Watch, Feliks detailed her concerns at great length, including the rise of trans-exclusionary radical feminism in Australia that she said was symbolic of a general rise of Nazism in Australia.
Elligett clarified in his statement that Szego was sacked not for her views on “gender-identity politics” but instead her repeated public disparagement of the newspaper and its staff.
“The Age is committed to covering gender issues in a way that few other outlets, including the ABC, have the stomach for. Any objective assessment of our reporting corroborates that fact,” Elligett told the ABC.
“I won’t reveal private criticism of authors and their work, but Julie has publicly stated that one of those reasons was the perception she had become too close to an activist community on gender issues. In my view, that disqualified her from writing news on the topic.”
Balance on this issue is something that is difficult to achieve, because one ‘side’ considers any discussion to be beyond the pale. Agree with them, or shut up. I’ll leave readers to consider which side.
The Media Watch piece was balanced. The Age’s coverage is lesser for its sacking of Szego. ‘Independent Always’. Not anymore.
When “one side” is talking abstractly about their “concerns” with transgender issues and the “other side” is talking about the validity of their very existence, I know which side is which in my opinion, but I suppose you consider “free speech” trumps the right of people to exist quietly in their own life.
Most people support trans rights (not all true), but not their right to shut down others viewpoints and impose their views on everybody else. Should bigots, racists and facists be able to complain the validity of their very existence is being questioned. Exist quietly eh??
women are dying in backyard abortions and before the Vote were powerless to challenge orthodoxy whos got dibs on outrage ya reckon?
when fighting for you life is seen in America today under anti abortion legislation and the patriarchy ; economic costson women and their children – she cant sell her babies or will she have economic agency ? Amnesia did women die in childbirth did women get covered up ? Adopt that reality too
“Exist quietly” that would be nice actually
Media Watch got it right. The transactivists are becoming what they argue against: fascist based on their behaviour by demanding total conformity. Julie Szego is quite reasonable. The flinging around of labels by the so called trans representatives highlights the inadequacy of their argument.
We’ll be cancelling our long term subscription to the Age.
Some great new media and art coming out if you look for it – check out Francis Aaron-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbk4zQttKyE
(“Women just need to train harder” – Rap song. Much more interesting than anything I’ve seen Fairfax review in the last 10 years)
Are we playing the conservatives game by keeping the trans war going?
I dont know much about it but Im happy to leave the trans kids alone.
Maybe we should all do the same?
Favourite would be the tranzx brigade leaving society alone and enjoying their delusions in private, rather than trying to assert that black is white, water runs uphill & up is down.
The Sainted Oscar’s “love that dare not speak its name” is the far back, dwindling tail lights in the rear view mirror, the LGBs having been usurped by the won’t shut ups.
Always enjoy your “helpful” contributions…. Are the numbers just because you couldn’t fit that many on twitter?
Asked a rusted Lib Party member & comfortably retired relative who started rattling on about trans, LGBT etc., if this kept him awake at night, his response was of course not.
It simply creates noise and diversions from serious issues of the day, that feed into Christian conservatism, patriarchy etc..
Much of the local anti-trans agitprop is simply imported offshore circular referencing promoted by Anglo RW media then especially on social media via sock puppets and grifters supposedly promoting ‘free speech’ and science scepticism; same talking points are used by LNP, GOP, Tories, Kremlin, Erdogan, Orban et al….
Comes under the broad umbrella of nativist (or eugenics based) authoritarianism to keep voters motivated or afraid….
It’s not so simple. Laws are being changed to accommodate these kids and their supporters. I think we need good evidence and justification for that. Where is it?
The fact that most of the same arguments and tactics that were rolled out against homosexuals decades ago are being re-used with little more than a search-and-replace, probably tells you all you need to know.
zero to do with the argument a mother is a woman who will be jailed for abortion or tokd shes too old to be considered for a job .. or the sad sick idea women and mother is a self identified state first not a female political, economic and controlled by patriachy
Why call women who are concerned about hard earned rights for our freedoms and physical agency and economic and social safety ugly labels like ” ugly , witch or nazi simply because other angry alienated men are displaced and have cooptded the womens rights rally is the countet argument which ignores the costs to womens freedom and autonomy – mutually exclusive ?
I’ve just read the Julie Szego piece, which can be easily found. It strikes me as epitomising fair and reasonable, very well researched journalism.
According to the Trans Movement if you actual engage with any critique of gender ideology that automatically makes you a bad person.
We need to shut down debate (according to the Movement) because we don’t listen to Nazis do we? And critics of gender ideology (even academic Gender Critical feminists and long term, respected LGB activists) are like Nazis because …. Melbourne.
In my extended family there is a transgender teen. Becoming informed about the issues surrounding trans kids has brought a decade-long steep learning curve. And the amount of misinformation and uninformed comment surrounding LBGTIQ+ people seems to me to be running a close race with the No to the Voice campaigners.
I also watch Media Watch each week and value it for its contributions to the importance of airing “differing points of view”.
The Voice, the ICAC report, LBGTIQ+ rights – all attract different points of view. Thank goodness. I should hate to live in a world where the only views we hear about are those of Trump, Johnson, #30 and their ilk.
We should all become better informed about issues, and also get to know and understand others whose views and experiences are unlike our own. Cancelling social media as it has become might be a good start.
opening up competition and improving the quality of journalism by keeping gravitas by a persons’ lifetime of experience- labels are labels not reality- a job keeper or a job seeker are both unemployed
When gender dysphoria in adolescent girls shoots up from almost unknown to 5,000 in a year at the Tavistock “clinic” alone – which led to its closing – the cause is not physical by psychic.
The old phenomenon of mass hysteria is now Iphone social contagion .
But it doesn’t have to be one extreme or the other. The ABC and the Guardian are pushing that polarised view by refusing to report on even UK things like the Tavistock scandal and the NHS stopping puberty blockers for children.
Media Watch itself has previously pointed out how the ABC appears biased in a very hotly contested debate-
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/ep-35/101544376
The Guardian has Sonia Sodha but otherwise Suzanne Moore and Hadley Freeman left there saying they were not free to report the feminist, Gender Critical perspective on trans issues.
BTW lots of LBG people don’t want “forced teaming” with TQ any more. They say that TQ has just hijacked the LGB movement and hijacks other movements too like feminism.
More and more TQ seems like a Men’s Rights movement in drag.
Really? I read the Guardian every day and have been fully informed about the Tavistock matter – I have made a point of trying to be informed about the range of views held so that I can help support my family members.. And i have also read about how successive Tory governments have defunded the NHS.
I agree with the ABC’s statement about the Media Watch episode. There are many differing points of view. Fortunately my family’s teen – plus parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, school administration, neighbours – has long been involved in the highly-praised program run by the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital.
I also read the Guardian every day but had somehow missed its several stories about Tavistock.
One recent article is by the Tavistock whisteblower himself.https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/27/gender-identity-treatment-needs-greater-caution
He is extremely critical of the Guardian’s coverage of Tavistock but his letter is titled “Gender identity treatment needs greater caution.” Then the sub-heading is “Dr David Bell, former staff governor at the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust, on its Gender Identity Development Service.”
But his letter is not about GIDS! His letter is about the Guardian’s bad treatment of the story!
There’s 6 paragraphs in his very informative criticism but at one point he says “Your article makes no reference to the growing group of detransitioners – those who regret the irreversible damage done and feel that their “treatment” was based on ideology, not appropriate clinical concern. Many suffered from confusion in relation to same-sex attraction; when I investigated Gids, this was largely ignored.”
So… someone blows the whistle on a medical scandal and then he has to also blow the whistle on the Guardian’s bad reporting of the scandal. And THEN the Guardian covers up his letter to them (which is saying the Guardian’s coverage is bad) by saying that his criticism of them is really about Tavistock instead!
That’s … surprising, coming from the Guardian.
It doesn’t stop there. The Guardian articles keep saying how the effects of “puberty blockers” are unknown and cause medicos anxiety. I can’t find any Guardian article on the NHS decision to ban them a month ago despite even the NY Times thought that UK decision was news-worthy-
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/health/puberty-blockers-transgender-children-britain-nhs.html
And when there’s “The Clinic” a documentary on ITV1 about Tavistock the Guardian heads up its review of all the shows that night by saying “TV tonight: the highly-charged debate about the UK’s most controversial NHS clinic”. The review of The Clinic repeats the emphasis on the controversy. OK, maybe that’s just the ad from the show itself. But in “The Clinic review – an admirably unsensational look at one of the NHS’s most controversial institutions” (by Lucy Mangan) it just emphasises – again and again – how much is unknown and – you got it – the controversy. The trans group lobby group Mermaids is mentioned but only to say-
“Under pressure from trans activists and charities such as Mermaids, a support group for parents of trans-identifying children, the Tavistock adopted the protocol and began to supply puberty blockers to patients. Demand for them rocketed…” So Mermaids was a “charity”. You have to go to the Telegraph review to find out that Mermaids “admitted to “pushing” the Tavistock to refer children for puberty blockers.” And that was even against the advice of GPs.
Agree with you about Tory govts and the ABC defending Media Watch. But although there are many differing points of view we’re not hearing them when the Guardian’s coverage of transgenderism seems controlled by journalists who are deliberately shutting out sensible Gender Critical feminists like Dr Holly Lawford-Smith of Melbourne Uni and Sall Grover (being sued for her women’s app which excluded biological men) and Liberal MP Moira Deeming.
The meeting at the NSW Parliament where 8 Gender Critical feminists spoke also didn’t seem to get a mention and that’s despite a Senior Child Psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer saying that 60-90% of children with gender dysphoria grow out of it when they mature. She’s been sacked for questioning gender ideology.
Also I couldn’t find any Guardian or ABC reporting on the smashing of windows at Melbourne Uni by people who identified themselves as trans activists and then claimed victimhood.
But the elephant seal on the Mornington Peninsula got a mention!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-23/giant-seal-resurfaces-blairgowrie-mornington-peninsula/101883398
Sorry for the long post. Best wishes for helping the kids with issues.
Brilliant! That was worth a separate lead article in Crikey. Something that Crikey ought to consider with such high quality unpaid contributions.
They call their sister names and shut down womens’ dissent .. they wont engage in civil debate and manipulate with the phrase and selective stats on suicide and state trans kids are killing themselves if a woman feels Mother is an important role in the family court and simply permitting any man to coopt womens’ limited power and invade irrspective of other womens interests is cruel and blinkered – the writer posed this question : do born women have rights too ?