Last week Mr S reported that – following months of deliberation – the BBC had (finally) decided to uphold a complaint about a controversial blog post written by its LGBT correspondent Ben Hunte. The case in question concerned a court verdict in December in which senior judges ruled against children being given access to drugs that would allow them to transition genders.
A lengthy piece by Hunte claimed that the High Court Keira Bell verdict on puberty-blocking drugs could cause young people considering transition to take their own lives. The BBC has now admitted that this piece was one-sided, risked endangering vulnerable people and did not meet the Corporation’s guidelines on reporting suicides.
Its own Executive Complaints Unit concluded that ‘the repeated references to suicide went beyond what was editorially justified in the context’ and that ‘when suicide is presented as a reasonable reaction to a situation, people in a similar situation may identify with the individual concerned and consider taking the same action.’
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