A COLUMN in The Observer by Julie Burchill that outraged transgender people by referring to them as "screaming mimis" and "bed-wetters in bad wigs" did not breach the editors' code of practice.
The Press Complaints Commission received 800 complaints about the article, which was published in The Observer on 13 January. It triggered a small demonstration outside the paper's London offices and an internal investigation by the readers' editor. The Observer's editor, John Mulholland, concluded the paper had "got it wrong", pulled the piece from the paper's website and issued an apology. But in a decision released today, the PCC says the column did not breach the editors' code even though it contains a clause that forbids "prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability".
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