This time last year we wrote that our hopes for 2025 were to see an end to self-identification of sex in media style guides, and the normalisation of fact checks around sex and gender.

We didn’t get either. But we did see progress.

The year began with President Trump’s announcement that there are only two genders, later amended thankfully in his Executive Order to only two ‘sexes’. The dilemma for news outlets - do we still treat this as an opinion or as an affirmation of something that’s obviously true?

Unfortunately for most of the year the understanding that no one can change sex continued to be treated as a ‘view’, and a controversial one at that.

It’s fair to say that nothing Trump did or said would ever have been able to persuade legacy outlets to do otherwise, as many would disagree with him if he said water was wet. We did hope that the Supreme Court For Women Scotland ruling in April would achieve this instead, but for a long time it didn’t. Media outlets were determined to treat accuracy as one side of an argument.

And a controversial one at that. As recently as November, BBC Scotcast put a sensitivity warning on Naomi Cunningham’s plain English responses to questions about the Sandie Peggie case. The BBC defended it, denying it was a trigger warning, but the spontaneous outrage it caused means it probably won’t happen again - and we expect and hope that in 2026 that constriction would also take in the routine response ‘some people might say that’s transphobic’ of which BBC presenters have historically been so fond.

But back to the beginning of the year. A single case made a gigantic contribution to improved media accuracy in the UK - the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal.

It was entirely as a result of Naomi Cunningham’s resolution (again) that linguistic honesty is foundational to settling the battle of competing rights in policy and law.

Sandie Peggie’s case focussed on the presence of a man in the women’s locker room. Judge Kemp ruled that the claimant and her team would be allowed (!) to referred to Theodore/Beth Upton as male and he/him.

News outlets, both press and broadcast, have always defended the appalling use of female language to describe murderers, rapists, child abusers and other perverts and predators, on the grounds they’re obliged to use the language of the court.

It’s not true. However having previously relied on that justification for dying on rapist hill, they had to stick to it in covering the Peggie tribunal.

They were now reporting a case which had three ‘languages’: the respondent’s team used female terms (with some slip ups) and the claimants used male terms, while neutral terms were also deployed, often by the panel.

The Independent still used ‘she’, the Metro avoided the case altogether, almost every outlet inaccurately reported that Sandie Peggie was complaining about sharing a locker room with a ‘trans’ medic rather than a man, and the routinely affirmative Guardian was criticised for its failure to cover the case day-by-day.

But coverage became almost universal, and most outlets chose to use neutral terms - they/them. Guardian correspondent Libby Brooks turned up with an occasional series of really fair pieces on it, apart from the fact that the Guardian will never not consider adding ‘trans’ to ‘woman’ to supply sufficient accuracy. (Amelia Gentleman has also produced terrific Guardian coverage this year of sex and gender.) The BBC, having been slow to start, reported every day of Sandie Peggie.

The Scottish press were the stars. The story was about more than the daily proceedings and they engaged in a race for scoops and a series of Freedom of Information requests about the cost to the NHS and the behaviour of NHS executives which continues now and will go on into 2026. Spectacular work by the Scottish Express, the Courier, the Scotsman, the Herald, the Scottish Daily Mail, the Scottish Sun, raised the bar for national coverage.

The Scottish Daily Express was alone in choosing undiluted accuracy. ‘We have accepted the biological reality at the heart of this intriguing case’ wrote its editor, Ben Borland. Stunning decision. Of course there were complaints but it was a successful challenge to IPSO. It demonstrated that the sky doesn’t fall on press outlets if they describe trans-identified men as men.

It was a first, but so was the largely consistent use of neutral terms by the rest of the media for a trans-identified man not charged with a violent crime.

BBC Scotland was particularly scrupulous (for the BBC) across radio, TV and online, having distributed strict rules on how to report the case, not just to its teams in Scotland but to London also. There was a huge row when one online writer in London changed a Scotland headline and lede on the Peggie case. It never happened again.

There was a much bigger impact than on the Peggie case itself. Journalists were being obliged to use a mental muscle that had gone soft, in working hard not to actively lie to readers about the sex of a trans-identified man. It sounds like a low bar, but it started a wider editorial conversation. Could this be done in other cases too?

In between the two evidence sittings in the Sandie Peggie case came the For Women Scotland ruling from the Supreme Court.

The outcome was unexpected and generated a media storm. It was clear that had it gone the other way, and women’s sex-based rights had been effectively removed in UK law, it would have made barely a blip on the media radar. It was so unexpected that, for example at the BBC, coverage was naturally led by Scotland, but in London correspondents had to be pulled off other stories for it, on the morning the judgment was handed down. But in the end the BBC led some of the best coverage of the story.

The Prescott memo in November about BBC trans reporting is credited with changing the way the BBC covered gender. But already in April this prescient piece from the BBC’s Alison Holt and James Melley about the Supreme Court sent a very strong message that a major shift was already under way.

That’s become more and more apparent through the second half of the year. The Prescott memo simply made it public and added urgency.

Nothing was announced, but the BBC had already acknowledged that this was not a story that should be confined to the Identity Hub and its LGBT team. The LGBT and Identity Correspondent job had been disappeared anyway (though Megha Mohan remains in role for World Service and produced this outdated guff in July) and the story was being redistributed. The Social Affairs Correspondent Alison Holt would taken on the bulk of it, but Health, Education and Politics would also step up.

BBC Scotland was producing enormous amounts of coverage, and had turned its approach on its head since its crashing errors at the start of the Isla Bryson farrago. Very quietly, BBC Scotland and Northern Ireland had changed course. (BBC Wales haltingly started to join them though BBC Regions continued to struggle.)

Across outlets, we thought that FWS would lead to the final abandonment of self-identification of sex as a technical default. Not because the law made any real difference to their style guides - they’d never been legally obliged to use preferred pronouns after all - but because it offered an opportunity to do so without admitting they’d been wrong before.

It didn’t happen, and hasn’t happened, but it started a process of reflection and change.

That was reinforced by the case brought by the case of Linzi Smith. In July the High Court found that Northumbria’s Chief Constable had an incorrect understanding of the Public Sector Equality Duty, and ruled that police officers joining Pride marches while in uniform could create an impression of partiality.

The case highlights wider concerns about the safeguarding of legally protected beliefs. Most news outlets aren’t subject to the PSED, but the BBC is (along with Channel 4) and that matters. The BBC shouldn’t need an extra justification for being impartial, but the treatment of perceived impartiality as a brand rather than actual impartiality as a public obligation had to be stopped.

At this time the BBC was coordinating a number of reviews and consultations about sex and gender. It had completed its Editorial Guidelines consultation (they were published in July) and was looking at the style guide itself, as well as reviewing guidance around the style guide, plus conducting a Thematic Review of Portrayal and Representation (editorial executives eventually took gender out of it): all the while many of the submissions made to all these reviews found their way into the David Grossman report, which then led to the Prescott memo.

You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to decide to say men aren’t women, but there are some very angry people on the other side.

So - as this was going on behind the scenes there was a reluctance to say anything about it. That is - make an official announcement that the BBC was shifting away from fulsome affirmation.

In the middle of all this landed the great Martine Croxall moment.

Faced with an autocue containing the execrable ‘the aged’ and equally grim ‘pregnant people’, the BBC newsreader clarified that the pregnant people are women.

We posted the clip, and the fact it instantly went viral highlighted the absurdity of identity activism. Why is it news, let alone a global phenomenon, that a presenter says ‘pregnant women’?

More than 400 people complained to the BBC.

They were all initially dismissed by the Complaints Unit, but 20 activists pursued it all the way to the Executive Complaints Unit, which eventually said Martine’s facial expression had indeed betrayed bias. It was a dreadful decision, and has really focussed attention on how captured and harmful the Executive Complaints Unit has become.

It’s completely out of step with the rest of the BBC. Is it still even relevant on ‘gender’? Croxall wasn’t reprimanded - in fact the Times was obliged to correct a headline which initially said she was. We’re hoping that progress on the ECU can be made next year.

While all this was going on, GB News was writing to Ofcom and asking it to agree that the Supreme Court judgment meant it was now settled that the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ refer to biological sex.

It laid out many of the arguments we’ve made ourselves to Ofcom, including that its biased research on offensive terms, which informs its approach, is irrelevant and should be dropped.

Ofcom rejected this obvious argument, and told GB News that due impartiality means it ‘must give airtime to claims that biological men are women when covering trans issues’.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with giving airtime to the claim - news outlets broadcast untrue and misleading claims and statements all the time. They just need to fact-check them. And they shouldn’t be punished for refusing to broadcast them.

It’s a setback, even though it was known that Ofcom was thoroughly captured. However it’s recently reopened an investigation into Talk TV with a view to ‘giving greater clarity’ and ‘providing guidance to broadcasters’.

This is something to look forward to in 2026. Ofcom had told us it wouldn’t revisit its research until next year, despite the Supreme Court ruling. It threw away an opportunity to retreat with dignity. This investigation, however, gives it a second chance to get it right. The time surely is not right for it to strengthen its activism. It must start to walk back.

There were high profile court cases in 2025 where female pronouns were still used for disgusting and violent men, though some outlets did better.

Here’s the Mail in April using neutral pronouns for fetishist Abbi Taylor while the BBC still uses ‘she’ and Sky News ludicrously also calls him a woman.

Here’s the BBC in August following Lincs Police in calling Zoe Watts a woman and using female pronouns. At least the BBC says ‘trans’ - Sky News just out and out misleads/lies, just like the police.

Here’s ITV News claiming that a 70-year-old woman killed her husband - not even a hunt that Joanna Rowland-Stuart is a man. Here, the BBC had a rethink - this story originally had Rowland-Stuart as a ‘woman’ and ‘wife’, but even before anyone complained, it was jumped on by editors who insisted on at least adding ‘trans’.

Obviously it’s not good enough, but it was an external sign that internal BBC conversations about sex and gender were live and active. What was also emerging by the autumn was an instruction circulated (internally only) that ‘bio male’ was to be used in BBC copy ‘to help audience understanding’.

We were told in an email that this was happening, and welcomed it - but requested that this guidance be published, Publication is an incredibly important facet of ensuring compliance.

Urgency has been added by a tsunami of stories. The Darlington nurses - avoided at first by the BBC and treated badly by BBC Woman’s Hour - were later interviewed by Dominic Hughes and the case covered properly. The Scottish National Library made the bizarre and discriminatory decision to ban The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht. Roz Adams. Sara Morrison. Rosie Duffield was vocal on FWS after leaving Labour over the issue. Graham Linehan was arrested at Heathrow, when he arrived back from the US for his trial for alleged harassment (cleared) and criminal damage (convicted but will be appealed). A women’s conference was attacked, Emma Watson made some dull comments about JK Rowling.

Plus of course the run of stories about public organisations refusing to comply with the law, or eventually and sadly deciding to do so. ITV ignored much of it but gave prominence to talk of an effort to go to the European Court of Human Rights by the Trans Law Clinic. ITV news mistakenly published the raw footage of this interview with trans-identified male Olivia Campbell-Cavendish - we alerted them and they took it down, but it was a very odd editorial decision to report this and none of the non-compliance.

BBC Politics made the same mistake with its Newscast ‘changemaker’ interview with trans male ex-judge Victoria McCloud. He was considered worth Laura Kuenssberg’s time in a way that Susan Smith, Marion Calder and Trina Budge, of For Women Scotland, who actually made the change in the first place, weren’t worth bothering with at all. We had an extended phone call/phone meeting with BBC Politics about it - during which it was acknowledged that when too many untrue claims are made in an interview, it’s impossible to challenge them all.

BBC Politics has been more recalcitrant than other hubs, but these issues with the BBC have begun to feel like a hangover of a terrible time. Our priority has. been achieving change - whether any of those journalists responsible for the harm caused will ever face consequences will have to wait.

Which brings us to the Prescott memo.

Briefly: sustained internal and external complaints about the BBC’s ‘trans coverage’, combined with senior executive concern, led the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee to commission an editorial adviser (in BBC employ) to carry out a review.

That was David Grossman, and he compiled a report that independent editorial adviser Michael Prescott summarised in a 19-page memo to the committee.

Someone who had sight of the memo was frustrated by the subsequent lack of action and leaked it to the Telegraph. Its revelations, particularly about a Trump edition of Panorama, led Director General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness to resign. The chairman of the BBC, Robbie Gibb and external advisers Mr Prescott and Caroline Daniels were then questioned by MPs.

On sex and gender, the Prescott memo highlighted much of what we’ve been complaining about, and what dissenters inside the BBC have been trying for years to change - gatekeeping by the Identity Unit which led to open selective bias. As we’ve said, by the time it was published, efforts had begun to manage the problem, but it gave a drive and impetus to that work.

This was the outcome. The BBC published the guidance that ‘where it helps public understanding’, its teams should always make clear that a ‘trans woman’ is a biological male and vice versa. Read here about the other actions being taken. There’s no technical change to the style guide yet - it still defaults to preferred pronouns.

That will matter a lot less now, because the fact the guidance has been published will inhibit complaints activism - which has been the bane of BBC coverage. The Editorial Complaints unit will no longer be able to respond to complaints from women about ‘preferred pronouns’ with its usual defence ‘that’s just what we do, it’s our convention’. It will have to work much harder to defend calling a rapist - or even a trans-identified male florist - ‘she’.

What has started with the BBC will, we hope ripple out to SkyNews and other outlets. We’ve already seen Channel 4 accused of transphobia for declining to affirm Graham Linehan’s accuser, Sophie Brooks. The BBC has ended the year ahead of the pack.

We’ll start 2026 with a new test of accuracy and impartiality, the highly controversial puberty blocker trial. Two things are already becoming clear: a growing reluctance to use the term ‘trans children’ - a phrase which should be abandoned for ever - but a growing enthusiasm for describing children as ‘young people’. This is a horrible ‘nudge’ habit aimed at implying that children are capable of giving consent.

There will also be problems with journalists simply not having the background and contacts to be able to cover the puberty blocker trial properly. Seen in Journalism is doing its best to redress that. Unfortunately the very existence of the trial means we’re unlikely to see fact checks on the health impact of puberty blockers very soon.

We’ll also see more coverage of the government’s plan for a conversion therapy bill. The BBC hasn’t started well on this front.

Finally - citizen journalism, and praise for Tribunal Tweets (again) who had to cover dozens of hearings. We will never get tired of applauding the unpaid, voluntary, but highly professional work of TT. Please support them any way you can. Nick Wallis did the same for the Graham Linehan trial - a vital service.

And where citizen journalism excelled was in its response to the Sandie Peggie judgment. It’s over 300 pages, but Wings Scotland very quickly pointed out that it contained significant flaws. Maya Forstater then announced that it included a quote from her own judgment, Forstater v CGD, that simply didn’t exist. From that moment, Twittizens found problem after problem, triggered broadcast and legacy media coverage, and led to a series of published corrections.

Sex and gender coverage still can’t live without citizen journalists. They’ve been driving a new openness and accuracy for years, and we can’t do without them now.

So our hopes for 2026? That the BBC can’t row back, and builds on the significant steps forward already made. That the new focus on accuracy spreads to BBC Regions, its global coverage and other UK broadcast outlets. That the regulators will follow this shift in approach. That there’s an understanding that the medicalisation of child ‘gender’ issues is not just an issue of disputed rights, but a terrible scandal and a stain on scientific research.

Thanks for your support this year again. We’ve seen big changes. There’s further to go. We won’t take our eye off the prize.