So, the moment finally arrived.

The Supreme Court of the UK confirmed on Wednesday morning that the words “man”, “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act mean biological sex, and unanimously allowed the appeal of For Women Scotland.

An emotional end to a protracted, often punishing fight, the relief of the women’s rights activists was palpable, conveyed up by news channels gathered at the court.

Cheers erupted as Sky correspondent Alice Porter reported the reaction from the crowd gathered outside.

The BBC’s James Cook called it “a resounding victory” for the Scottish campaign group.

The jubilant response was apparent not just in London but also Edinburgh, the origin of this fightback, where women’s rights activists burst into a rendition of For Women’s Rights, sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne during Sky’s Connor Gillies live report.

As the Deputy President of the Supreme Court, Lord Hodge, read out the decision noting that the Court was “well aware of the strength of feeling on all sides”, the implications of this decision were starting to become apparent.

The change of tone from the media - the sector that has taken gender identity as a given - was almost immediate.

Not a seismic change: more like a vibe shift.

The clarity and weight which this decision provides can no longer be ignored.

The most striking words, often mentioned by Lord Hodge as he read out the decision were “coherent” and its opposite “incoherent”.

And it is the latter which could describe much of our media’s approach to this issue.

While the BBC and Sky News correspondents did an admirable job of reporting the decision and the drawn-out process FWS faced, it is, nevertheless, tinged with frustration to note how long it has taken to get here.

And even now, in the aftermath of this decision, clues of the work that lies ahead are still apparent.

If you caught BBC Radio 4’s World At One, there was less examination of the effect a lack of clarity has had on half of the population as coverage was weighted on the impact it would have on a minority - despite the court emphasising that its decision was not a triumph of one side over the other, but simply ensures that the 2010 Equality Act would be interpreted in a clear, consistent way.

The headline couched the story as trans-identifying men not being ‘legal women’ and contained an emotive accusation from Trans Actual UK’s Jane Fae that he and other men would be excluded from society because of this clarification.

For Women Scotland’s Susan Smith was interviewed and given a fair hearing, but when it came to the presenting the transgender activist view, there was little challenge from presenter Sarah Montague on the claims that the decision both signalled Fae’s exclusion from society yet, paradoxically, it was also “a nothingburger” that would not change trans-identifying men like himself from using female spaces.

News agencies Associated Press and Reuters, have long presented gender identity as a fact, not as a disputed idea, soaking their copy in affirmative language.

Yet on Wednesday, both produced neutral, straightforward reports - AP here, Reuters here - of the landmark ruling – a welcome and necessary change of tone to convey much-needed impartiality.

This decision has sent many organisations into reflection-mode, including the Scottish government. Importantly for us, media and press regulators will also have to revise their practices as a matter of urgency.

After having spent the best part of a decade swimming in gender self-identification, with little regard for the facts and the subsequent effects on impartiality, there is some serious course-correction to be made.

From Tuesday’s Mirror headline, where it described a man who’d smeared faeces over the walls of a nursery as a ‘woman’ - and only towards the end of the article concedes that he was “born male” - to the BBC addressing convicted rapist, Lexi Secker as ‘her’ and ‘she’, the self-ID model that has been operating at news organisations has only served to confuse audiences and sow mistrust, as gender identity theory overtook biological facts. Yet the regulators Ofcom and Ipso refuse to act. Worse, they’ve made it harder for editors themselves to act.

Every time there is a print story about a woman accused of sexual assault, the immediate question arises – is it really a woman?

Professor Alice Sullivan’s all-important review on misreporting of sex and gender in data collection reveal the cascade of dangers it produces in public institutions.

Trust is just one casualty.

While the precedent set by Forstater v CGD cemented gender critical beliefs as worthy of respect in a democratic society and the right of those expressing sex realist beliefs to not be discriminated against, the regulators, like the press, took that ruling to be a matter of opinion, with the same value as the opinion ‘trans women are women’.

They set up the false premise that all opinions were valid without regard for the fact that some opinions carry more weighted than others.

Stating biology as fact was just one opinion that had to be balanced against pseudoscience, such as humans can – literally - change sex (spoiler: they can’t, as McConnell has proved.)

Facts in themselves are not offensive, yet press regulators, at times, seem to think otherwise.

Last December, IPSO took the extraordinary step of reprimanding The Spectator for calling Juno Dawson, a trans-identifying man, “a man who claims to be a woman”.

This phrase led Dawson to complain to IPSO, which then ruled that this fact was “both pejorative and prejudicial of the complainant due to her [sic] gender identity”.

The Spectator’s editor, Michael Gove, slammed the ruling as “outrageous” and “offensive to the principle of free speech and chilling in its effect on free expression.”

In the light of this decision, both IPSO and OFCOM will need to revise their view that gender self-identification takes primacy over the facts.

Likewise editors who oversee journalists covering tribunals such as Peggie v Fife Health Board.

Last of all, the intervention of groups such as The Lesbian Project and the LGB Alliance have underlined how gender self-identity impacts the rights of same-sex attracted people.

At the heart of this, it is a lesson in how self-identifying LGBTQ organisations like Stonewall that once helped win rights for lesbians, gays and bisexuals betrayed them once they pivoted to transgender causes.

The labelling of lesbians who did not want relations with trans-identifying men as ‘sexual racists’ was an especially low blow.

That particular episode was in response to a long-overdue BBC article on the pressure felt by same-sex attracted women to be intimate with men who call themselves lesbians – and the abuse they receive if they refuse to do so.

But, with this ruling, there can be no doubt that ‘lesbian’ means a woman attracted to women. No men, however they identify, can be lesbians, no matter what Guardian favourite Judith Butler says.

When it comes to the media, there is still a long, long way to go. Years of affirmative narratives and rejection of fact-based wording have sown mistrust.

The media have been crucial in proselyting audiences to ideas of gender identity, cementing such notions that men literally became women because they say so.But the impact of this decision cannot be ignored.

But with the clarity embedded in the Supreme Court decision - now is the time for the media to communicate that reality, especially to an audience that has already been failed by outlets misreporting equality law and turning pseudoscience into received wisdom.

Facts matter, in life, in politics, in law, and they’re the bedrock of journalism. Our purpose is to inform accurately and without prejudice. It’s very simple. Let’s get started.