This is a very tight overview of hundreds of articles over six months - we simply want to give a flavour.

Six years ago Maya Forstater’s contract with CGD wasn’t renewed after she made clear on social media that she understands that people can’t change sex. When she decided to take legal action, and appealed for public funding, she swiftly raised over £100,000 (it eventually rose to more than £200,000).

It was a phenomenal story. It was also largely ignored by UK media (only the Times picked it up in May 2019) - until she (initially) lost. Then everyone wanted it. The BBC was particularly enthusiastic about covering her loss, despite having previously and studiously ignored the story, even rejecting a suggestion that Maya be interviewed shortly after her initial crowdfund.

Looking at coverage of Sandie Peggie in 2025 we have first to acknowledge that the background landscape has changed beyond recognition. Balanced coverage is always going to annoy both sides but what’s been needed for so long is simply coverage, lots of it, and we’ve got that now.

Everything was helped by the BBC deciding early - back before the first two weeks of the tribunal in the spring - that it would be covered, in full, with strict rules in place on neutrality.

The rules were that Beth Upton, who is male, would be described with neither male or female pronouns, not just in court reports but across all its copy. This is a result of the successful application by Sandie Peggie’s legal team to be able to use male pronouns in court. What this did is put the use of pronouns into dispute - the judge effectively acknowledging that use of female pronouns puts you on one side, and the use of male pronouns puts you on the other (which happens to be the fact-based side). Once that happened, the BBC had to go along with it in all its reporting. It did take until July 13 for the BBC to acknowledge that Upton is male (with not even ‘biological’ or ‘born’ to qualify it) and even then it was after an external intervention. But it’s on record now.

We believe one of the reasons it was covered in by the BBC and taken so seriously is years of work by Tribunal Tweets. They have made this type of case unignorable. What’s more, we can check their stories against live stenography. So they simply had to cover it, and once that was settled, they had to do it every day. Patchy coverage would have generated complaints and accusations of bias.

However it must be noted that the BBC hasn’t previously bothered with plenty of stories it supposedly ‘had’ to do and it certainly hasn’t bothered with an excess of neutrality. So this BBC coverage, while sometimes flawed, is a country mile better than its coverage of any ‘gender critical’ court case we’ve seen before.

But bias did come later, with cherry-picking - that is, which testimony to highlight - and the BBC ended on a low note with two highly selective pieces.

There were also problems on at least two occasions with post publication editing. Once, where the London desk intervened to make the headline and top par more activist - and once last week where a headline about Upton’s dubious evidence was changed to something that made no sense but didn’t land Upton in the mud.

The impact of the BBC decision raised the level of interest generally. STV, not generally over-interested in sex realist cases, carried useful coverage over the two weeks which was reasonably balanced, and pushed it out online, on air, and on social media. Sky also produced solid coverage, not every day, but what it did was largely fair.

The biggest flaw across the broadcasters and press outlets was a reluctance to explain that Beth Upton is a man, and the persistent headline claim that Sandie Peggie objected to him because he is trans. We emailed a number of outlets and PA about this but they remained resolute.

The Scottish press were fantastic. This was absolutely nothing to do with trying to keep up with the BBC. The Herald, the Scotsman, the Courier and the Scottish Express have been competing for months on scoops around NHS Fife and Sandie Peggie. The quality and volume of journalism, including investigative, has been breathtaking. They’re still writing stories from the ‘bundles’ even now (the Scotsman here and the Courier here) along with recaps, profiles and lookaheads.

Every Sottish outlet offered daily copy of proceedings, and the Herald and the Scotsman ran live blogs. The reporters assigned were multiple senior correspondents. We haven’t seen coverage on this scale before.

Ben Borland, the Editor of the Scottish Express deciding to use male pronouns for Beth Upton, to publicise it, explain why, and defend it, was a great moment. It didn’t come without consequence, there were plenty of complaints, and the Express was reported to Ipso and even the police, but there’ve been no regulatory consequences (so far anyway) and that’s an important precedent.

As well as the live stream there was great attendance in court. The Times, Daily Mail, Courier, Herald, BBC, STV, GB News all turned up.

Nationally - the Telegraph and the Times were naturally the most consistent, with the Daily Mail surprisingly intermittent. Times Radio actually produced a half hour podcast when the tribunal resumed two weeks ago.

However the decision of PA to sit a senior correspondent on the live stream every day for two weeks meant the message was spread across dozens of smaller local outlets. PA is still a trusted ‘single source’ so the pressure on Sarah Ward was tight. Her copy turned out to be indispensable.

There was a disappointment in the way almost all outlets scattergunned coverage of the ‘bacon mosque’ evidence on a day when there was other good testimony. It was the top line, and reporting it was thoroughly due. However no one explained the relevance to Sandie’s case, or why we were hearing hours of hearsay testimony and gossip. No need to omit it - it would have been wrong to - but it felt gleeful.

After proceedings ended there was a delightful surprise. The Guardian simply hadn’t bothered with covering the proceedings day by day - despite having the PA copy - but all of a sudden Libby Brooks produced this fair recap.

Notably - for this case, the coverage continued with enthusiasm in between the two sessions of proceedings, and we expect that to go on. There may be more to be revealed from the bundles, and it’s just a month before two days of oral submissions. The following month, we have the Darlington nurses case.

Considering the scale of change driven by Maya Forstater’s case, it had little coverage, and many people, including HR directors, still don’t know about it. Sandie Peggie’s case is different - in very many ways (perhaps largely) because of Maya and Sex Matters. It will make a change, and what will inevitably be saturation coverage means it will be general knowledge.

Note that no outlets have changed their style guides since the Supreme Court judgement in April. Most still use self-identified gender. But the reporting of this case may have an impact on that too. Subs and correspondents have had to practice using names and titles instead of wrong-sex pronouns. Simply exercising that mental muscle is important.

We might end up tweaking this overview and adding more links. But the most exciting thing for us has been the volume of output, the tens of thousands of words, daily reports on TV and radio news, the social media content. There may be a few outlets which would like to squash this story but they haven’t a chance any more. Coverage has come a long way since 2019.