The WRN has taken part in a consultation by the press regulator IPSO to update its guidance on reporting of transgender issues Gender Identity Ideology.

 

Learn more about the WRN’s position and what to do if you think a media outlet has got its coverage wrong.

 

If you are a working journalist and have a media inquiry, please email our Press Team.

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IPSO Update

 

Most newspapers and magazines in the UK are members of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and follow its Editors’ Code and guidance for editors and journalists. New guidance on reporting transgender issues is about to be published.

 

The current guidance was written in 2016 and is not fit for purpose — as headlines such as ‘Woman exposes penis…” and reporters being directed to call rapists women have shown.

 

Last year, Dr Amy Binns and Sophie Arnold — lecturers in journalism at the University of Central Lancashire — published a paper looking at court reporting specifically. This detailed problems with the current guidelines and proposed remedies. 

 

The paper was withdrawn from the university’s website after complaints that it was ‘transphobic’, but you can read it in full here. 

 

The WRN was one of a number of groups the UCLan researchers invited to make a submission, which you can read in full here.

 

We were subsequently contacted by IPSO — which regulates most of the newspapers and magazines in the UK — to take part in its consultation to update its guidance on transgender reporting to editors and journalists. You can read our submission here.

 

IPSO’s guidance is due now.

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