Ooh there is a complete version of the speech I made the other night, calling out transphobia in the press.
— Patrick Strudwick (@PatrickStrud) December 14, 2018
I was accepting the Specialist Journalism award at the British Journalism Awards.
One day things will change. pic.twitter.com/0sWkdnYQ3s
Specialist Journalism, sponsored by Ableforth’s
Winner: Patrick Strudwick, This gay man was given repeated electric shocks by British doctors to make him straight (Buzzfeed UK)
Buzzfeed’s Patrick Strudwick said he worries about the effect the media has on transgender people as he collected the prize for Specialist Journalism at last night’s British Journalism Awards.
Strudwick, LGBT editor at Buzzfeed UK, said it was the first time that an LGBT specialist had been awarded in this way, adding: “And I know that because I’m the first LGBT specialist.”
Speaking after collecting his award at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms in central London, he said: “I would very much like to thank everyone at Buzzfeed because they gave me this job.
“I never realised that I could become a journalist, because when I was growing up I used to read the newspaper and they would say about people like me that we were poofters and a danger to children and that we deserve to die of Aids.
“And so to have a job where I can expose what bigotry and hatred does to my community is extraordinary…
“What I described just then about what newspapers used to say about gay people sounds kind of crazy and anachronistic now – and things have changed, newspapers have changed towards gay people.
“But I feel there is a new scapegoat and that is transgender people and I worry very deeply about the effect that our media has on transgender people. I think we can sing better songs.”
Strudwick was one of two Buzzfeed UK journalists to win at Press Gazette’s British Journalism Awards this year, with Richard Holmes taking the New Journalist of the Year prize, sponsored by Bournemouth University.