BBC Hires Gender & Identity Correspondent with links to TERF movement

The BBC has recently hired a reporter with explicit anti-transgender bias to cover Gender & Identity issues. Sofia Bettiza joined the BBC as their Gender & Identity Correspondent in early August of this year and has since published several troubling pieces for the BBC.

Bettiza follows an unusual number of anti-transgender organisations on X, such as Genspect, LGBAlliance, Sex Matters, TransgenderTrend, FairPlayForWomen, TransitionJustice and Trans Widow’s Voices just to name a few.

Additionally, Sofia follows a disturbingly high number of detransitioners and anti-transgender activists, such as Helen Joyce, Maya Forstater, and others. It’s important to highlight that Sofia does not follow a similar number of transgender activists and organisations, which would make this more understandable if that were the case.

In early August, Sofia published this article in the BBC under the brand “BBC InDepth”, titled “What does science tell us about boxing’s gender row?” where she uncritically repeated the false claim Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif had XY Chromosomes. This has since been removed in a revised version of the article.

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More troublingly, there were several issues with her coverage of the recent Tickle V Giggle case.

Initially, Bettiza failed to include a photo of Roxy Tickle. The transphobic hate group SEENinJournalism mainly praised the article but took issue with this because Roxy, in their view, “looks undeniably male in every media image.” Bettiza responded to SEENinJournalism’s hate speech, assuring them that she was adding the images.

Bettiza additionally claimed that Roxy Tickle sued because she merely “identifies as a woman” — where the legal truth is that she sued because she is legally recognised as a woman and was excluded from a space based on being trans. An important distinction and one reaffirmed by the outcome of the court judgment.

Furthermore, in the Federal Court judgment, it is made clear that Sall Grovers’s behaviour with misgendering and transphobic jokes was completely unacceptable. And that the persistent misgendering caused Ms Tickle to become suicidal. However, Bettiza repeats Grover’s transphobic claims uncritically throughout her article.

This is incredibly unethical behaviour from a journalist, and as Rivkah Brown points out on X “Journalists have (or at least ought to) ethical practices when covering vulnerable individuals – and few people are more vulnerable than those whose gender identity is publicly speculated about. Bettiza has a duty to the subject of her reporting & has abandoned it.”

The BBC needs to apologise for hiring someone with such inherent bias for the post of covering transgender issues and instead hire a transgender person to cover the issues facing our community.

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