Ok, deadnaming is not and will never be okay. But ever wonder why media ppl commit the same mistakes over and over again? (A thread)

Last night, @JervisManahan told me what happened when his report deadnamed Donna. I remember in my media ethics class before, this is called an ethical dilemma.

Accdg to Jervis, before they found out that Donna is Trans, the family describes her by her assigned sex at birth and call her by her legal name. But after the recovery of Donna’s body, Jervis asked the family if Donna is trans, but the family insisted that Donna is gay.

So Jervis tried to look for Donna’s FB based on the legal name given by the family and they found out that Donna identifies herself as Donna.

This where the dilemma starts.

The reporter was torn between the grieving family’s assertion of Donna’s sogie which can possibly a ground for ethical violation if the family files a complaint

and how Donna identifies herself online as affirmed by her friends. The problem in the decision making process is that we don’t have a standard/adopted guidelines on reporting LGBTQ people.

This is why the reporters most of the time follows what the immediate/grieving family says.
Right now, we can only refer to GLAAD’s news reporting guidelines, and there are some of our reporters who follow this.

But how do we avoid further deadnaming and gender insensitive news reporting in the future? We need to institutionalize these guidelines. We need to make our reporters agree and follow these guidelines. Either organizations like NUJP or KBP can help us institutionalize this

Members of KBP follow the guidelines given by KBP. KBP can even give sanctions for ethical violations of its members. If KBP adopts the GLAAD guidelines for example, we can assure that when deadnaming in local press happens,

There is an institution where we can file our complaints for ethical violations.

Kahit ilang beses natin i-try mag educate every time may ganitong incident, hangga’t di nakasulat sa papel at walang nag iimplement ng guidelines na ito, patuloy itong mangyayari.

Justice For Donna! #TransLivesMatter