Complaints have been upheld against a newsreader who made a facial expression while changing a transcript from “pregnant people” to “women”.

Martine Croxall’s facial, which involved widening her eyes, went viral and she earned praise from anti-trans campaigner JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels.

The incident triggered 20 impartiality complaints over the way she altered the news script during the live reading on the BBC News Channel earlier this year.

Croxall was introducing an interview piece about those at most risk during UK heatwaves.

While reading the autocue she changed the script to instead say “women”.

She said: “Malcolm Mistry, who was involved in the research, says that the aged, pregnant people … women … and those with pre-existing health conditions need to take precautions.”

The BBC reported that the broadcaster’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) concluded that her facial expression as she said this gave the “strong impression of expressing a personal view on a controversial matter.”

The ECU said Croxall’s facial expression laid it open to the interpretation that it “indicated a particular viewpoint in the controversies currently surrounding trans identity.”

The ECU said Croxall’s facial expression after she said “pregnant people” had been “variously interpreted by complainants as showing disgust, ridicule, contempt or exasperation.”

BBC reports that the ECU added that “congratulatory messages Ms Croxall later received on social media, together with the critical views expressed in the complaints to the BBC and elsewhere, tended to confirm that the impression of her having expressed a personal view was widely shared across the spectrum of opinion on the issue”.

The ECU noted that the explanation offered by BBC News management was that “Ms Croxall was reacting to scripting, which somewhat clumsily incorporated phrases from the press release accompanying the research, including ‘the aged’, which is not the BBC style, and ‘pregnant people’, which did not match what Dr Mistry said in the clip which followed”.

It explained that “giving the strong impression of expressing a personal view on a controversial matter, even if inadvertently, falls short of the BBC’s expectations of its presenters and journalists in relation to impartiality, the ECU upheld the complaints”.