Is this the most hated woman on TV?

[IwantToRetire]

Many posts on different threads on FWR include comments, concerns about the online world. So was interested to see this article in today's Observer magazine.

But in fact doesn't really touch on the issues that come up on FWR.

But thought it might be of interest anyway, as it focuses on how disinformation gets spread online, and the consequences. And how women just doing their job can be subjected to abuse and threats.

The BBC receives more abusive messages about Marianna Spring than anyone else. But the disinformation correspondent remains hopeful about people – and the world we live in

While organising an interview with Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first Social Media Investigations correspondent, I asked if I could meet her at home. It would be more intimate than meeting at the BBC’s offices, I said, more relaxed. But a communications manager called me on the phone. It’s a bit sensitive, she said. It’s not that Marianna doesn’t want me to go to her house, she explained, it’s just… the trolls.

In the first five months of 2023, the BBC received 14,488 messages abusive enough to be escalated by their system designed to detect hate; 11,771 of those, around 80%, were about Spring. Due to her reporting on conspiracy theories she’s regularly targeted with death threats and harassment, both on and offline. For a while, a man camped in a tent outside the BBC’s New Broadcasting House shouting “disinformation agent” in her face as she left work. Which means, while I can say Spring welcomes me with a hug and invites me into her front room for a conversation that will span murder and Kate Middleton and teenage boys, I can’t describe the city she lives in, or who she lives with, or if she lives with anybody else at all, or give any personal details that might put her in danger.

“It’s quite a big deal for me this,” she says nervously, as we settle on her sofa. “I keep so private, because I know that the world I investigate has attracted this group of trolls who will stop at nothing to figure out literally everything about me and then use it in some way.” She once mentioned that her dad was a doctor, which led to strangers suggesting this connection is why she is invested in killing people with the Covid vaccine. Once she shared a picture online of her family’s 19-year-old cat and she was accused noisily of animal cruelty. “They also called her Chairman Miaow,” Spring adds, “which was actually quite funny.”

Article in full at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/27/its-important-to-talk-about-online-abuse-marianna-spring-on-trolls-conspiracy-theorists-and-positivity

Indeed. It is not like he just has an alternative take on events or a slightly a different political view, he has been utterly deranged and vile towards people who have endured immense suffering.

I would struggle to be polite to him as well.

I've rarely been so enraged and disgusted by anything as I was by the Sandy Hook 'truthers'. This is surely just the same thing?

This man appears to be someone who definitely shouldn’t be given a platform to air his repulsive views. Do you think he has a point about Manchester??????

Two survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing have won a High Court harassment case against a former television producer who claimed the attack was staged.

Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall for harassment and data protection in what was the first such case launched against a conspiracy theorist in the UK.

Across several videos and a book, Mr Hall claimed several of those who died were living abroad or were dead before the attack and told the court he believed that no-one was "genuinely injured" in the bombing.

The judge said she found Hall to be "unreflective and insensitive to the level of distress likely to be caused by his persistent attempts to discredit what those who have suffered so tragically in the Attack say about it".

He "abused media freedom" to publish false allegations based on the "flimsiest of analytical techniques, and dismissing the obvious, tragic reality to which so many ordinary people have attested".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0j8r8558yo

Thought I'd add the archive version of the article for anyone who needs it 👍

https://archive.ph/vI9lC

BTW is anyone else having to complete an insane number of CAPTCHAs to get access to the archive.ph and archive.is sites of late or is it just me??

The point is, that if people are not allowed to put batshit ideas across and be roundly proved wrong, then the people become literal martyrs for the cause.

I wasn't there at Manchester and neither was anyone I know. So I have to take it as read that it happened. I see the images and the reports and these are then what I use to identify what happened.

If someone says 'it didn't happen' then we use the evidence that we have gained to decide whether to listen or not. But that person should be as free to think it didn't happen and to provide their evidence as much as anyone is free to think what they want, no matter how batshit you think it is.

The reason for this is because sometimes things HAVE been reported and have been complete lies and when all the conspiracy theorists have been jailed, who will be left to be a truth teller?

Wanting the only people that say things to be the ones you agree with is what cancellation culture is all about. The mob rule.

What with the onset of AI, everyone needs to be asking if the thing they are seeing actually happened.

I remember a mass murder in the States a few years ago, I saw the images, I saw the footage and I saw the pictures of the person that did it. It happened in the middle of the night in the UK, so late afternoon/evening in the USA.

It was then noted that the person was, lets say, part of the LGBTQIA++ community. Reports started disappearing before my eyes. The whole thing was pulled from the internet. By morning, it hadn't happened. I've never seen another report or mention of it, ever. Apart from seeing it with my own eyes.

People are allowed repulsive views. We are not all little kings who can chop the heads off of everyone that disagrees with us. They should be free to speak and you should be free to not listen to them. Once that ends, we are all on our way to a fascist state, which is not good for anyone. What happens when your views are the ones that other people think are 'repulsive'?

He's allowed repulsive veiws. He's not allowed to harrass and unpset the victims.

He was sued for harassment not his batshit views.

@TheHangingGardensOfBasildon Was it in a particular article she had a go at Hall or via Twitter? Thank you.

It was a programme on Radio 4:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0jml8nh

The trouble with BBC Verify is that it only verifies the things it wants, a lot of things I want verification on are strangely avoided by the BBC.

Much is made about misinformation, but the worst type of misinformation that the BBC engages in is a failure to report certain stories.

A lot of the stories posted on this forum are not reported by the BBC because it would go against their narrative (particularly around trans issues).

Now would Ms Spring investigate the false reports about women (who turn out to be men claiming a trans identity) committing crime? I think not.

Thank you!

Why is this on the Feminism board? She’s trolled because she exposes misinformation, not because she’s a woman.

I completely disagree that you should engage in public debate with people who advocate conspiracy theories. It’s not going to change that person’s views and to engage with them in that way actually lends a degree of credibility. The very fact that serious broadcasters are giving them time and attention suggests that there is something to debate. Facts aren’t matters of opinion or politics. 22 people died.

She perpetuates misinformation as well as exposing it.

How do you know what a conspiracy theory even is if you don't allow people to say words and provide evidence to counter those words?

Should everyone just say nothing unless the 'misinformation' office allows it?

Let them say it, no problem. Don't let them harass others, though, and ensure that their 'arguments' and 'facts' are rebutted, calmly and with evidence. Also we as a society need to work harder at making sure children are taught critical thinking at school.

Should everyone just say nothing unless the 'misinformation' office allows it?

Just because you believe something to be true, without any basis in reality, doesn’t mean you have the right to stalk and harass people. As the courts showed by convicting this man.

Pre internet we called these people crackpots and nobody gave them a second thought. Now they have an instant audience and present themselves as ‘journalists.’

This deranged creep stalked people who had permanent injuries from the bombing because, with no evidence whatsoever, he believes it didn’t happen. He his behind cars outside their home taking pictures. Seven years on he’s still refusing to accept reality. People, including children, died in that bombing. He is delusional.

I am responding to the people that keep saying that nobody should debate conspiracy theorists.

Of course we should debate whatever we want.

Harassment is a completely different thing.

You can debate whatever you want. No one cares. When a serious broadcaster engages in debate with a conspiracy theorist it grants them and their ramblings a degree of credibility that they don’t deserve.

Because, even if it wasn't overt in the article, it is widely recorded that women journalists / reporters get more abuse than men.

Also just because something isn't a "women's issue" doesn't mean that there is value in feminists discussing it.

That is the point of a feminist forum.

To see how feminist ideas influence, informa how we perceive and experience the world.

The most 'serious' broadcaster in the UK [the BBC] spews out bullshit all the time. They use this excuse to actively avoid discussions about actual things that are happening in the actual real world, so I'd just be a bit suspicious of who they say is a 'conspiracy theorist' to be honest.

Your mental health is your business

I am responding to the people that keep saying that nobody should debate conspiracy theorists.

No one has said conspiracy theories shouldn't be discussed.

The issue was someone posting on line that people who had been seen, were known to have been at the arena had never been there. And that therefore it was fraudulent to claim you have been injured or died there.

And the evidence is there.

Seriously, there is a huge difference between discussing as both self appointed investigators online and professional reporters looking into how misinformation, manipulation, etc., has been used to mislead people whether for political or commercial reasons.

And indeed the role whistle blowers play in making public facts that have been hidden from us.

But to concoct a fantasy based on someone who thinks everything on the internet is real, about people pretending to be victims of a bombing is just daft.

Worse still it means that some investigations that have revealed facts that are important, are now all going to be taken with a pinch of salt because of one really stupid and arrogant man.

Next thing someone will argue that the idiot woman who misidentified the killer of the young girls in Southport should have the right to do it.

No one has said conspiracy theories shouldn't be discussed

Well, yes at least 2 people on here did which is why I responded.

This thread is about misinformation that is monitored by someone who themselves got the job using misinformation and whose employer is the biggest misinformer in the UK. We should be allowed to point this out. If all you do is to listen to the self appointed misinformation experts then you need other people to point out the other side otherwise it ismlianle to be corrupted whichnjs exactly what has happened with modern journalism.

I'm not saying which side is ever right or wrong, but people need to have the freedom to push back. Even if they are the ones that are wrong.