How Auntie excludes

Cath Walton has a useful Critic piece on how the BBC excludes feminist voices within gender politics.

How Auntie excludes
Why can the BBC interview Andrew Tate but not gender critical feminists?

There’s nothing as coarse as an official blacklist at the BBC. Our national broadcaster doesn’t ban people, it doesn’t forbid words or phrases, and it doesn’t proscribe certain stories.

It’s just that some words and phrases are never used, some stories never see the light of day — and some people never, ever get the call. This is true for domestic coverage at least, which is what I know about.

Anyone paying attention already knows the BBC provides a selective and somewhat peculiar platform on many other issues too. The whole piece is worth reading because no MP can be unaware of  bias games played by the BBC.

How does this happen? No, there’s no blacklist. There are unspoken mores, born in a miasma of fear, confusion and occasional activism, that seem to function as a brake on allowing a certain kind of convincing gender critical feminist to have much of a platform at the BBC.

Very occasionally, this is voiced outright. Once an editor openly said that Transgender Trend’s Stephanie Davies-Arai wouldn’t be welcome on air because “some people think she’s anti-trans”. That kind of admission is exceptionally rare, though. The unofficial “no, not ever” for subjects and guests is usually established through a range of delaying tactics, failures to act and after-the-fact excuses.