Broadcast regulator Ofcom has reportedly U-turned on its dismissal of over 22,000 complaints about transphobia on TalkTV.

Earlier this month, the UK’s top media regulator dismissed calls to investigate over 11 ‘transphobic’ segments aired on the right-wing channel between June and July this year.

However, it has since reversed its decision according to Good Law Project, the legal advocacy group that led the campaign against TalkTV in July.

A spokesperson for the regulator said in a letter shared by the legal group that it withdrew its decision to dismiss the complaints and would instead investigate the segments.

“Ofcom has decided, exceptionally, to withdraw the 11 decisions and to consider afresh whether your complaints raise potentially substantive issues under the Broadcasting Code which warrant investigation by Ofcom,” they said.

Good Law Project threatened to sue the regulator after it issued the decision on 6 November, saying it was in “active conversations with our lawyers about litigating Ofcom’s failure to take action.”

In the wake of its reversal, the group said it will continue to “scrutinise” any decisions that come from the regulator’s investigation.

Ofcom promised to “publish our new decisions, with reasons, in the Bulletin in due course in order to provide guidance to broadcasters and further clarity to the public.”

In just four weeks, the Murdoch-owned broadcast channel aired 11 segments featuring guests espousing anti-trans talking points across several of its news and opinion shows.

In one segment, from 21 June, TalkTV host Alex phillips suggested giving trans children life-saving puberty blocker medication was “evil”. In another, from 1 July, Kevin O’Sullivan accused a trans woman of trying to “pretend that he’s a female”.

Just days later, host Julia Hartley-Brewer suggested: “By definition, if you’ve had to get a piece of paper to say that you are a woman, you must accept then that you are man.”

Should Ofcom rule that the broadcaster violated its Broadcasting Code, which enforces regulatory standards for all UK media, it could face fines of up to £150,000 or higher for each violation.

Over 22,000 members of the UK public urged Ofcom to investigate TalkTV’s “torrent of transphobic hate”.

The regulator initially dismissed those complaints, saying they did not “raise substantive issues warranting further investigation”.

It further argued the programmes which aired the segments were “not news”, and were, in its view, protected under freedom of expression laws in Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

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