Analytical journalism with BBC Newsnight's Hannah Barnes - new podcast episode
Introducing you to journalists and stories making the news today
Our guest on the latest episode of the J-Lab podcast is Hannah Barnes, investigations producer for the BBC’s Newsnight programme.
Hannah’s reports with science correspondent Deborah Cohen and her subsequent book about the rise and fall of the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) for children at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London are the result of intensive reporting, carried out across several years and based on more than 100 hours of interviews with Gids’ clinicians, former patients, and other experts.
Gids was established to provide talking therapies to young people who were questioning their gender identity. But 15 years after the service was founded, staff began expressing concerns about the rapid rise in patient referrals to endocrinologists who would prescribe hormone blockers designed to delay puberty. Many young people with complex case histories of autism, eating disorders or histories of family abuse were being referred to the service, then given puberty blockers.
Clinicians interviewed by Hannah for her Time to Think book compared it to East German doping scandals in the 1970s or failings at the Mid Staffs hospital in the 2000s. The clinic will shut later this year, to be replaced by a number of regional centres that will aim to offer more holistic treatment.
This has been a difficult subject for Hannah to report - some trans people see criticism of Gids as attempts to stop children transitioning at all; some gender-critical campaigners treat its closure as vindication of wider arguments. Hannah’s book makes the point that this isn’t a culture war story. It's a medical scandal. And yet while her scrupulous and meticulously researched journalism – with 70 pages of notes and references – has been widely praised in reviews from the Guardian to the Telegraph, more than 20 publishers passed on the chance to publish her book. Her eventual publisher, Swift Press, struggled to find people who would even copy-edit the book or design its cover.
In our conversation, Hannah outlines her analytical, source-based methods, and offers advice on how to retain a questioning approach during reporting, while always treating contributors and interviewees with decency and respect.
The J-Lab podcast is brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University. Listen here on SoundCloud or here on Apple Podcasts or here on Spotify for this latest in a series of episodes that explores the journalists and stories making the news today.
REWIND: Digging up the past with Alexa Mills of the NYT
If you missed our last Civic Journalism Lab event – a masterclass by Alexa Mills of the New York Times on researching and reporting historical crimes – fear not: you can play back a video of the hybrid session on our YouTube channel here. In fact, you’ll find all kinds of useful and thought-provoking content on our YouTube channel, from masterclasses on “TikTok for Journalism” and “Data Visualisation” to discussion panels on “Travel Journalism” and “Dealing with Online Abuse”.
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