A pair of Oxford academics, Professor Michael Biggs and Dr Ace North, have conducted a spot of research into how BBC News reported transgender homicides in Britain 2000-2025. They conclude that, even though in reality transgender perpetrators outnumbered transgender victims 20 to 11, the BBC published more than four times as many articles on the victims as on the perpetrators, thereby ‘contributing to perceptions of exceptional vulnerability’.
- On average, each victim was the subject of 12 BBC articles, while each perpetrator was the subject of only 4.
- Where a transgender person was the victim, the great majority of BBC articles mentioned their trans identity, usually fairly close to the top of the story. Where the transgender person was the perpetrator, by contrast, over half the BBC articles failed to even mention the fact that s/he was transgender.
- In one case, a reference to a perpetrator’s transgender identity was added to a BBC article only after complaints from readers.
- In a few cases where a perpetrator’s transgender status was reported, the focus was on their suicide while incarcerated, ie on them as victims of the prison system.
- In another case, the BBC reported ‘a woman’ being charged with murder, but then did not report the subsequent trial and conviction, an omission which ‘conveniently enabled the BBC to avoid mentioning that [the perpetrator] is transgender’.
We wonder how our ABC would go if subjected to such scrutiny. Would it fare any better? We doubt it.