Is the BBC scared of the transgender debate?

I like the BBC. I like the idea of a national broadcaster and I like a lot of BBC output. I admire many BBC journalists – the Corporation employs some of the very best. I am not a Beeb-basher, not least since so many of the people who bang on relentlessly about the BBC’s supposed biases are stupid or horrible or both. I say these things because for all my affection for it, this is an article about an area where the BBC is sometimes getting things wrong. Some recent BBC coverage of transgender issues fails to meet the usual standards of its journalism. Those failings, in turn, raise some wider questions for the BBC on this topic.

The first piece that isn’t up to scratch is this Reality Check about transgender prisoners, published earlier this week. Reality Check, when it’s good, is first-class public service journalism, the sort of rigorous, evidence-based analysis that British journalism and politics desperately need more of.