Poll shows 70% of trans people think BBC News is ‘hostile’

A rightwing campaign has forced resignations at the BBC over claims including “pro-trans” bias, but the people who bear the brunt of its coverage disagree. A YouGov poll of trans people commissioned by Good Law Project has shown that 70% think that BBC News generally takes a “hostile” stance when reporting on them.

And they’re right. When we offered the BBC an exclusive on this survey – showing how trans people in Britain live in fear and have suffered a catastrophic loss of faith in politicians, judges, the police and the media – it didn’t dare pick it up.

The offer was made weeks before the crisis brought on by the rightwing PR executive Michael Prescott’s broadside was published in the Telegraph, attacking the broadcaster’s reporting of US politics, Gaza and gender issues while making the extraordinary claim that this onslaught did not “come with any political agenda”. Prescott spent 10 years at Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, and is managing director of a rightwing PR company, while the board member reported to have “led the charge” against the corporation worked for the Tories.

Not only does a large majority (70%) of the trans people surveyed see reporting by BBC News on trans issues as hostile – with only 15% judging it “neutral” and the 5% who think it “supportive” outweighed by the 9% who “don’t know” – but a staggering 78% said it reports stories around trans rights either “badly” or “very badly”.

In 2021, the BBC admitted it had breached standards on accuracy after publishing a news story with the sensational headline that some lesbians felt “pressured into sex by some trans women”. The following year, the corporation ruled that the Today presenter Justin Webb was not sufficiently accurate when he claimed that accusations of transphobia against the academic Kathleen Stock were false. And earlier this month the broadcaster found that the presenter Maxine Croxall had fallen short on impartiality when she altered a script and pulled a face as she introduced an interview on the BBC News Channel.

Good Law Project’s survey’s of 457 trans, non-binary and intersex people, representing a community which is estimated to make up less than 1% of the UK population, suggests that BBC News is falling short of its responsibility to “reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all the United Kingdom’s nations and regions.” And by adopting a “hostile” position towards trans people it is failing the duty laid out in its charter to “provide impartial news” (PDF).

For Good Law Project’s executive director, Jo Maugham, the survey is “really important”.

“It’s the first of its kind,” Maugham said, “with a large sample size relative to the population polled, was conducted by a leading polling company, and has very troubling findings. Putting it shortly, there has never been more compelling evidence of how frightened trans people are to live in Britain today.

“Against that background it is appalling – although also sadly emblematic of the BBC’s editorial line on trans people – that it refused to carry the story.”

According to Elijah Jaeger, a researcher at Trans Safety Network, the survey is the inevitable result of the BBC’s reporting over recent years.

“For almost a decade the BBC has been platforming fringe anti-trans views as if they were neutral or widely held,” Jaeger said, “which has enabled a significant shift to the right in the Overton window.”

It’s time for the BBC to live up to its duties and stop attacking trans people. We’ll be keeping up the pressure until it does.

• Tell the BBC to stop attacking trans people.
• All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from an online survey conducted by YouGov Plc. The total sample size was 457 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 23 July and 11 August 2025. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all trans adults, including non-binary, intersex, other, aged 18+.