The broadcaster’s first disinformation correspondent spends her time pursuing trolls and dismantling conspiracy theories. In return she is abused, slandered, threatened. She talks about battling cranks, extremists – and Elon Musk
On my way into Broadcasting House, the BBC’s London HQ, I saw some graffiti on the building – “BBC Covid Liars”. I had just finished Marianna Spring’s most recent podcast, Marianna in Conspiracyland, and there was something neat and droll about seeing its proposition in real life: Covid hoaxers are real and they are alive with their own righteousness. Not only that, but the BBC is at the centre of their theorising – the supposed public service broadcaster brainwashing the people of the UK.
What I didn’t know until I met Spring, 27, the BBC’s first specialist disinformation and social media correspondent, was that when the graffiti appeared a week ago, posters of Spring’s face went up with it. “I don’t like the way that the huge volume of online abuse spills over into offline action,” she says, trenchant but understated. She doesn’t want this normalised, for people to think: “it’s OK to go outside the BBC and leave a message saying, ‘We’re outside.’”
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