Ofcom won’t investigate TalkTV’s transphobia – we’re taking a stand

Ofcom has dismissed more than 20,000 complaints about Rupert Murdoch’s rightwing television station, TalkTV, claiming that a series of programmes broadcasting transphobic views didn’t raise “substantive issues” requiring further investigation.

In July this year, 21,795 people joined Good Law Project’s campaign, making a complaint to the media regulator about TalkTV’s vile transphobia. 

In that month, TalkTV broadcast 11 discussions on trans rights. And in every discussion, TalkTV’s hosts and guests consistently spouted transphobic views. 

One guest said that respecting trans people’s rights is a “mutual mass delusion”. And one of its hosts described trans women who wish to use women’s toilets as “hulking great perverts”.

Ofcom dismissed those complaints without looking into them. In a letter to Good Law Project, Ofcom said “these programmes did not raise substantive issues warranting further investigation”.

Having taken advice from specialist media lawyers, we believe Ofcom’s decision may be unlawful. We think it has failed in its duty to give adequate reasons for refusing to investigate the complaints and that its decision was “irrational” – a lawyer’s word which means: so unreasonable that no reasonable public body could make it.

For our part, we think Ofcom’s decision not to investigate TalkTV’s grotesque commentary on trans rights is a dereliction of duty.  TalkTV’s warped perspective on the trans community feeds a false narrative that is putting the trans community at risk.

We have instructed a team of barristers and are in continued correspondence with Ofcom, seeking answers. If those answers are unsatisfactory, we intend to challenge Ofcom’s decision to whitewash TalkTV’s transphobia in court.