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The BBC\u2019s first disinformation correspondent has said \u201cit\u2019s normal to hate me\u201d as she revealed that more than 80 per cent of abuse directed at the corporation\u2019s journalists is targeted at her.<\/p>\n
Marianna Spring, 27, began working at the BBC in 2019 and a year later was appointed its disinformation and social media correspondent. Since then, she has been subject to extreme trolling online, and has even had an incident of harassment \u2013 which took place offline \u2013 referred to the police.<\/p>\n
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Marianna Spring, the BBC\u2019s first disinformation journalist.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>RTS<\/cite><\/p>\n The corporation has a system for monitoring the online abuse that its journalists are subjected to, with software detecting correspondence containing cyberbullying, physical threats, violent language and doxxing (revealing personal information online), and then flags these cases for escalation.<\/p>\n Between January 1 this year and late June there were 14,488 escalations. Of these, 11,771 \u2013 more than 80 per cent \u2013 were directed at Spring.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I found that out, I was quite relieved,\u201d she said in an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine<\/em>. \u201cTo have someone be, like, \u2018Oh, actually, you do receive this phenomenal level of abuse,\u2019 it makes you think, \u2018Oh yeah, OK, I\u2019m not going mad.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Among the trolling and slurs directed at her include: \u201cfilthy dirty propagandist\u201d; \u201cliar\u201d; \u201ccommunist b—h\u201d; \u201cleftist disgusting ugly dog\u201d; and \u201cyou\u2019re a mindless slug of greed that I hope publicly gets thrown under a moving bus. Literally or figuratively.\u201d<\/p>\n BBC headquarters in London.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n Earlier this year, one incident of harassment, which Spring said she cannot reveal further details of, spilled over from the online social media world to the real world, and has since been referred to the police.<\/p>\n Asked how she copes with being constantly trolled, she said: \u201cI\u2019ve a brilliant support system around me and they love what I do. I think part of my positive approach is that I really don\u2019t want them to be worried about me at all.\u201d<\/p>\n However, she concluded that for some people, and many online trolls: \u201cIt\u2019s really normal to really hate me.\u201d<\/p>\n The issues Spring has investigated include anti-vaxxers and people who believe in state-sponsored conspiracy theories, including those who believe that the US government was responsible for 9\/11 or that the Manchester Arena suicide bombing by Islamic terrorist suicide bomber Salman Abedi, which left 22 people dead, did not happen.<\/p>\n The BBC journalist grew up with her parents and younger sister in the suburbs of south London. She attended a private school and took part in a scheme for young reporters run by the publisher Newsquest before being awarded a place to study French and Russian at the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n As an undergraduate, she wrote for one of the university\u2019s student newspapers and tried and failed to win a place on the BBC\u2019s graduate scheme.<\/p>\n She was on work experience at The Guardian<\/em> in 2019 when one of its reporters said that she should contact BBC journalists whom she looked up to.<\/p>\n \u201cI emailed the stars I loved, like Emily Maitlis, Fiona Bruce, Mishal Husain, and Emily replied to me. I sent some links to some reporting I\u2019d done, and she said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you come in and meet our deputy editor? We sometimes have shifts going at Newsnight.\u2019 And that\u2019s how I started at the BBC.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe conspiracy theorists love to say that [the BBC] created my role because they knew COVID was coming,\u201d when she was awarded her current role in 2020.<\/p>\n The BBC was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n