a tale of two docos - ABC 'balance' & trans kids

Just when some trans people and their families might have hoped it was safe to start going back in the water of ordinary life, the ABC stir up the dangerous waves again.  Coming on top of the extraordinary 'no' campaign assault on gender diversity during the postal survey, its seems mainstream media seek to learn few lessons. Last night's showing (27 November 2017) of the BBC documentary Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best? was a striking case in point.  Its initial showing (in the UK in January 2017) was strongly opposed and then vigorously criticised by many authoritative voices in the UK, including Trans Media Watch who made a formal complaint to the BBC questioning whether it had breached its own code of conduct.   Such protests rightly raised a plethora of issues, not least the alarmist commentary and space given to isolated and pernicious 'experts' whose views have long been discredited by their peers and left behind by modern medical, psychological and pastoral authorities and practice.   Knowing all this, why then did the ABC repeat the BBC's own mistakes in the face of a transgender community still reeling from recent affronts?  Was it a false sense of 'balance', perhaps justified in some strange thinking of ABC minds by the repeat showing of another BBC offering immediately beforehand in Louis Theroux's 2015 documentary Transgender Kids?  Whether yes or no, it reflects major problems with media handling of transgender issues today...

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