A former BBC News boss has claimed she was driven out of her job by colleagues who were trans activists.
Fran Unsworth who was the Corporation’s Director of News and Current Affairs from 2018 to 2022 said the news division became ‘increasingly unmanageable’ during her tenure because of a pressure to adopt what she called a ‘mono-perspective’ on trans issues.
She said: ‘I would actually say it drove me out, just dealing with the progressive editorial issues and the bullying around them all. It was incredibly difficult.’
The former BBC executive delivered her criticisms in an interview with her former colleague Rob Burley which was published by the website UnHerd yesterday (Saturday).
Her comments will compound the worst fears of viewers who believe that the BBC has embraced a radical gender ideology which is out of step with mainstream public opinion.
Ms Unsworth, 68, said that BBC managers had to accept responsibility for an environment at the Corporation where radical views on trans and identity issues were normalised.
BBC news staff felt obliged to adopt a ‘kind’ approach to the trans issues and trans people even at the expense of their own journalistic integrity.
She said: ‘There was a sea in which we all swam…an atmosphere. We need to be kind to transitioning people. It’s a social phenomenon. And I think this ‘be kind’ thing was at the heart of it.’
Fran Unsworth (pictured), who was the Corporation’s Director of News and Current Affairs from 2018 to 2022, said the news division became ‘increasingly unmanageable’ because of a pressure to adopt ‘mono-perspective’ on trans issues
Asked if she thought that atmosphere had been a problem journalistically, she said: ‘I do, yes. I do.’
Ms Unsworth said news staff who sought to challenge this prevailing consensus came under an ‘awful lot of pressure’ from colleagues in news, entertainment and drama who had embraced the ‘mono perspective’ on trans issues.
In the interview, Ms Unsworth defended herself against accusations that she had capitulated to the demands of trans activists at BBC News.
‘I don’t feel I completely caved…I really don’t, but I do think that [I] could have done something more robust. The BBC needed to be better than that.’
She said the BBC’s problems at the time had reflected the ‘progressive madness’ engulfing other institutions.
She said: ‘This wasn’t something that just affected the BBC…The world went mad, and the BBC, because it is part of the world, went a bit mad with it. This was going on in every institution in society; there was a kind of national bullying going on.’
She added: ‘It wasn’t just the trans issue [at the BBC]. There was lots and lots of bullying going on about all sorts of things: people didn’t want to hear from certain points of view; they’d ‘no platform’ them; all that safe-spaces s..t.’
This is not the first-time concerns have been raised about BBC impartiality on gender issues.
Last year a leaked internal report by Michael Prescott, the Corporation’s editorial standards adviser claimed that some BBC news staff had felt unable to offer a critical perspective of trans issues because of pressure from gay and pro trans staff at the Corporation.
Some BBC insiders say the broadcaster’s coverage of trans issues has become more balanced in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling of 2025 which re-established the importance of ‘biological’ sex in the Equality Act 2010.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘BBC News has taken a number of actions relating to our reporting of sex and gender, including updating the news style guide and sharing new guidance, making our social affairs editor responsible for this coverage, and where there have been concerns about particular stories, we have addressed them.
‘We continually review our coverage to reflect developments such as the Supreme Court ruling.’
