In defence of the Spectator

A recent ruling against the magazine should trouble everyone who believes in press freedom

According to the liberal sophisticates who wield such immense influence over the political and cultural life of our nation, we are living in a ‘post-truth’ age. It’s a claim they make repeatedly – and usually on occasions (once rare, but these days less so) when things haven’t quite gone their way. So, for example, in response to the Brexit vote and the election of Trump, we were told that the masses had been duped – that they had fallen for the lies of nefarious actors who had exploited them on social media or wherever.

We saw it, too, during the covid pandemic, when any standpoint that didn’t accord with the official demand for hard lockdown was condemned as bogus or unscientific.

Being so apparently enamoured with the concept of truth in matters of political discourse, one might have expected these upstanding folk to have rallied to the defence of one of Britain’s most prominent current affairs magazines this week, after it found itself upbraided by the press regulator for – get this – publishing a statement that the regulator itself accepted was factually accurate. Yet, so far as I can see, there has been barely a squeak from any of them.

Anyway, the ruling was as bizarre as it was chilling. For those unfamiliar with the details, the Spectator reported on Tuesday that the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) had upheld a complaint against it that a comment piece published on its website breached the editor’s code of practice in that it had discriminated against a biological man who identified as a woman by referring to him as ‘a man who claims to be a woman’. I can assure you that you read that right.

The man in question submitted the complaint himself. He goes by the name of Juno Dawson. Having obtained a gender recognition certificate in 2018, Dawson asserts that he is now a woman. The comment piece, headlined ‘The sad truth about “saint” Nicola Sturgeon’, was penned by Gareth Roberts, a decidedly anti-woke TV scriptwriter and novelist (they do exist). Roberts, a gay man, plainly has little time for transmania. His piece critiqued Sturgeon’s enthusiastic embrace of trans rights and examined how it had ‘dogged the late stages of her time as first minister’. In the fateful passage, Roberts reported that Sturgeon had been ‘interviewed by writer Juno Dawson, a man who claims to be a woman, so the conversation naturally turned to gender’.

In a sane world, nobody would have batted an eyelid at the words. Regardless of his own perception of himself, and of any certificate he happens to hold, Dawson plainly is a man. But this is Britain in 2024, where feelings are elevated over facts and demonstrating anything less than total respect for how someone ‘identifies’ borders on the criminal.

So when Dawson’s complaint landed in its inbox, Ipso sprung into action. In his complaint, Dawson argued that Roberts’s words constituted harassment. He also asserted that they were factually incorrect (he didn’t merely claim to be a woman; he was a woman) and amounted to discrimination on the grounds of gender identity.

Ipso rejected the suggestion of harassment. It also found that Roberts was entitled to consider Dawson a biological male and, on that basis, his comments were not, of themselves, inaccurate. But, citing clause 12(i) of the editor’s code, which requires the press to avoid prejudicial or pejorative references to certain personal characteristics, including ‘gender identity’, it upheld the complaint of discrimination. Roberts’s words were ‘belittling and demeaning to the complainant,’ declared Ipso. By way of remedy, it ordered the Spectator to publish details of the adjudication online and to link to it directly from the piece.

What on Earth are we to make of all this? On one level, there is an argument to say that Ipso was simply abiding by its own rules. In which case the rules are absurd. Gender ideology remains highly-contested terrain – probably more so now than ever – and the idea that those who choose to declare themselves members of the opposite sex may expect some sort of special protection from the everyday standards of criticism, debate and mockery – particularly in the context of everything our society has ever known in the way of social and cultural norms – is patently ridiculous.

Ultimately, these types of protections are put in place not because they are rooted in common sense or scientific truth, but because the trans lobby has managed to convince our political and cultural institutions that their cause is as valid as any other – and because those who run those institutions are evidently petrified of being accused of exhibiting any sort of prejudice.

And that probably explains why members of the ‘post-truth’ brigade, usually so keen to be associated with the defence of accuracy in reportage and political commentary, have remained conspicuously silent over the Spectator ruling (though their reticence may also be attributable to the fact that the magazine’s new proprietor happens to be one Sir Paul Marshall, owner of that thorn in the side of the liberal establishment, GB News). That, in turn, compels us to consider that if they are so willing to turn a blind eye when one of our leading journals is rebuked by the industry watchdog for publishing something which in the eyes of most of the population amounts to a simple statement of fact – indeed, is a statement of fact – perhaps they forfeit the right to be taken seriously on anything else they say.

The spectator’s new editor, Michael Gove, was justifiably furious at the Ipso ruling. ‘When Gareth Roberts wrote that Juno Dawson is a man who claims to be a woman, he was exercising his right to free speech and indeed expressing a view that many would consider a straightforward truth,’ Gove wrote in a column about the affair. ‘Dawson may have a gender recognition certificate, but no piece of paper, whatever it may say, can alter biological reality.’ Gove went on: ‘Parliament may pass laws, but they cannot abolish Dawson’s Y chromosome … Dawson cannot dictate how others think, nor decide what language others use when they describe the reality they see.’

Well, quite. In this age of cancel culture and stifling ideological conformity, it is more vital than ever that we defend, with all the strength we can muster, our remaining freedoms. One such is the freedom of journalists and commentators to report the facts and opine without fear that they will be brought before the censors for having said things that are awkward or unfashionable.

The ruling against the Spectator should trouble us all.

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