Trans Media Watch is a campaign group which aims to ensure "that trans

Transgender

Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

 people are treated with accuracy, dignity and respect by media organisations in the UK". It started as a Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

 group in 2009, collecting examples of transphobia

Transphobia

Transphobia is a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards transsexualism and transsexual or transgender people, based on the expression of their internal gender...

 in the UK mainstream media

Mainstream media

Mainstream media are those media disseminated via the largest distribution channels, which therefore represent what the majority of media consumers are likely to encounter...

 and providing information. Trans Media Watch works with regulatory bodies, major media outlets and politicians to try to improve the representation of trans (sometimes referred to as 'transgender') people in the media. TMW offers free advice to trans people who have been approached by the media to sell their story - and also to media producers who wish to create content which is trans-friendly.

Research

In 2009, TMW published How Transgender People Experience the Media, the first piece of research undertaken in the UK into how transgender people feel about the way they are portrayed in print, television and radio.
78% felt that the media portrayals they saw were either inaccurate or highly inaccurate, with only 3% considering them accurate; yet despite this, 55% would like to see representations of trans people more often and only 10% would like to see them less often.
95% of respondents felt that the media do not care what transgender people think.

Memorandum of Understanding

In March 2011, UK broadcaster Channel 4 became the inaugural signatory to TMW's Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) - a unique document which calls for better representation of trans people. In May 2011, Women in Journalism became signatories, citing the death of human rights lawyer and trans woman Sonia Burgess as a source of greater awareness about trans issues. The Observer newspaper also took notice of TMW due to Sonia's death, saying there is a "need for sensitivity and respect" when dealing with transgender stories.

At the MoU launch, held at C4 headquarters, Lynne Featherstone

Lynne Featherstone

Lynne Choona Featherstone , is a British Liberal Democrat politician, and the Member of Parliament for Hornsey and Wood Green....

, the junior Minister for Equality, said "Congratulations to Trans Media Watch for this brilliant initiative and to Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 for being the first (hopefully of many) broadcasters to sign up."

Style Guide

TMW has produced a style guide

Style guide

A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field...

for journalists and television producers who wish to cover trans issues with accuracy and respect.