BBC newsroom in open revolt over rebuke of Martine Croxall after she raised eyebrow at ‘pregnant people’ script

BBC boss Tim Davie faces calls to resign amid a newsroom revolt after a newsreader was reprimanded for correcting the word “pregnant women” to “female” live on air.

Senior BBC journalists are said to be furious at the censorship of Martine Croxall amid claims the company has been ‘taken over by trans ideologues’.

The Mail on Sunday understands Ms Croxall’s colleagues plan to complain directly to the chief executive about how she has been treated and will call on her to overhaul the publisher’s ‘absolutely insane’ complaints unit.

When Ms Croxall, 56, was broadcasting an episode about the UK heatwave in June, the highway instructed her to advise that “pregnant people” should take precautions. After reading the sentence briefly, he corrected it by raising his eyebrow.

But in a decision that stunned other BBC journalists, the Corporation’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) last week found Croxall had breached impartiality rules and concluded that his facial expression ‘gave the strong impression that he was expressing a personal view on a controversial issue’.

Censorship is a ‘turning point’ for the BBC, sources say, amid a widening rift between the newsroom and bosses. They emphasized that the complaints unit has reported directly to Davie since 2023.

“If it can happen to Martine, it can happen to any of us,” a BBC source said. ‘There were doubts in the newsroom when this came out.

‘All he did was say one word other than otocue, and he didn’t roll his eyes, he just moved his face. Are presenters not allowed to move their faces anymore?

The Mail on Sunday understands Ms Croxall’s colleagues plan to complain directly to the chief executive about how she was treated

‘This is a turning point for the BBC. Tim Davie needs to go, Deborah Turness [chief executive of BBC News] Samir Shah has to go, the president has to go.

‘Tim Davie came in and promised to change things at the BBC but under his watch we had the Huw Edwards scandal, we had the Tim Westwood scandal… but it was Martine’s situation that really angered people.

‘He had really impressive support from his colleagues because the overwhelming majority of people were on his side.’

The source said George Orwell, whose life-size statue stands outside the BBC’s New Broadcasting House in central London, would be ‘turning in his grave’ and likened the case against Croxall to the ‘face crime’ policed ​​by the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

The MoS understands that the phrase ‘pregnant people’ was written into the script from a press release by a young producer under pressure. It appears that news readers will often modify poorly worded scripts when presenting them without the audience realizing they are straying from automatic guidance.

But in this case Ms Croxall appeared to have already been waffling on the word ‘elderly’, which does not appear in the BBC’s style guide, and failed to notice the phrase ‘pregnant people’ until it was too late.

The controversy fueled domestic calls for the ECU to be scrapped. The unit is headed by senior executive Fraser Steel, who is believed to have been involved in investigating complaints about the BBC since the mid-1990s.

Another BBC source said: ‘The feeling is that the ECU is an ivory tower and some of these people actually believe that gender is non-binary and that you can change gender. There is suspicion in the newsroom that there must be one person, or possibly more people within the unit, who are truly advocates of this point of view.

‘This is incredibly frustrating for those on the shop floor. There’s a feeling in the newsroom that the complaints unit is absolutely crazy. To be fair, this view is shared even by some senior managers.’

While Ms Croxall’s manager is understood to have informed the newsreader of the ECU’s finding against her, the MoS understands she was not formally reprimanded or removed from the broadcast.

He presented the lunchtime news bulletin on BBC1 yesterday.

There are calls for BBC director-general Tim Davie to resign over newsroom rebellion

This week, Ms Croxall posted a photo of herself smiling at the camera with colleague Sally Bundock, who was sitting behind the news desk, as the pair prepared to go live on air.

The ECU’s decision to uphold 20 complaints against Ms Croxall over the ‘pregnant people’ row comes a day after the BBC’s former independent adviser, Michael Prescott, claimed the corporation had avoided broadcasting stories critical of trans issues.

This weekend a source said there was a group of reporters in the newsroom who were ‘shutting down’ such stories, saying: ‘These people make it incredibly difficult for any young reporter to do an impartial investigation when it comes to sex and gender. ‘They’ve been doing this for years.’

Ms Croxall has worked at the BBC since 1991 and was the broadcaster’s main presenter during the Paris attacks in November 2015.

He was also presenting BBC News on April 9, 2021, when news of the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh broke.

The BBC declined to comment.