The media are going for Olympic gold in the truth slalom, skilfully swerving around uncomfortable facts and deftly dodging their duties to their audiences.
Take journalist Joshua Surtees’ gushing profile of 43-year-old male weightlifter Laurel Hubbard for the BBC. After nearly 20 years competing against men, Hubbard retired from male sport, declared himself trans, shifted to the women’s category and then qualified for the Olympics. Astoundingly, this is allowed under International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines. These permit males to compete in female events if they have identified as transgender for four years and have testosterone levels below 10 nanomoles for a minimum of 12 months (the average testosterone level for women ranges from 0.3 to 2.4 nanomoles per litre).
