Marianna in Pronoun-Land
Sadly, BBC Verify does not extend its services to giving murderers the correct gender
If I had to invent a conspiracy theory - the type that the BBC’s Disinformation Reporter Marianna Spring would investigate - it would be that she was an agent sent to destroy the BBC from within, along with Director-General Tim Davie.
Before Marianna adds me to her “disinformation” watchlist, I should add that that was a joke. But her shows are so outrageously obnoxious - more triggering to right-wing voters than a livestream of Ian Hislop having Emma Thompson and Richard Osman round for lentil stew - that you can see how one might end up so conspiratorial. It’s hard to remember that Davie was once lauded as the man who could “turn the broadcaster into a money-making machine”. In fact, he and Spring seem the fastest way to polish it off.
Being generous, one might say that Spring, at least, had to be talented to become the BBC’s “first specialist disinformation correspondent”, demonstrating to executives Alan Turing levels of code-breaking ability, or, who knows, being able to navigate a room of laser beams, Catherine-Zeta-Jones-in-Entrapment style. Whatever the case, it takes a unique person to think themselves up to the job of arbitrating truth for the UK and even the world (given that Spring’s investigations go further than Totnes, Devon, where she once examined the rise of the Far Right).
Spring evidently fancies herself as a personality, not just a presenter - perhaps dreaming of a slot on Stricly Come Dancing sometime in the not-to-distant future. One could imagine she and Giovanni Pernice finishing the foxtrot to three 9s and one 8 from Craig, before Claudia Winkleman asks her how she’s enjoying the show. “It’s just transformed my confidence after years of trolling!” She might say. “Marianna Against the World” is the message of everything she creates.
Recently Spring published her own book Among the Trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland, and taxpayers have been treated to two series, Marianna in Conspiracyland, and Why Do You Hate Me? (a question which apparently needed six episodes).
Appearing on Jeremy Vine to speak about the latter, she joked how they both got trolled a lot as though they were two chronically unlucky souls, subject to random conditions, such as being rained on more than the average person or afflicted with hayfever in December, not professional irritants that they are, constantly poking the bear and being stunned when they don’t receive a lick back. Elsewhere she told Vine that her own inbox, swarming with trolls, had provided the material for her investigation into why people hate others. It was a revelation indeed that Mrs Me, Me, Me would be the subject of a new investigation into Me, Me and a Little Bit More Me (and the trolls).
With the rise of warfare and Artificial Intelligence, you could say there’s never been a better time for the BBC to persuade viewers that it needs Spring and its disinformation service, Verify. But even when the team does something fairly impressive in the analytical stakes - for instance, detailed examinations of the IDF’s activities in Gaza - it can’t help being ridiculous. For instance, the first journalist I searched for other than Spring, having read their piece about Israel, turned out to be a “Climate Change Disinformation Journalist” - whatever that is.
Extraordinarily, for someone who wants to examine disinformation, Spring invited Sadiq Khan on her show Why Do You Hate me? where he was presented as a victim, not the seasoned manipulator he actually is. Poor Sadiq had been the subject of a “faked audio clip”. At least it didn’t cost him millions, unlike the Londoners he has subjected to undemocratic traffic charges based on flawed data. Were Spring independent of mind, she might haved asked London’s Mayor about the time he falsely said nine out of 10 cars were ULEZ compliant - and was ticked off by the statistics watchdog. She could have also asked him about his £141,406 per year Deputy Mayor for the Environment and Energy, Shirley Rodrigues, who contacted academics on several occasions to change the wording of research that showed “no evidence” of health benefits from the low emission zone (LEZ).
Clearly “disinformation” only ever applies to things that would offend the sensibilities of Spring and her Climate Change Disinformation Brethren. Otherwise she might have kicked off this week when the BBC described Scarlet Blake, a man who murdered another man months after livestreaming himself torturing and killing his neighbour’s cat, as a “woman”. Apparently such extreme lying is mandated, thanks to the BBC’s news style that says: “We generally use the term and pronoun preferred by the person in question, unless there are editorial reasons not to do so.”
If even the BBC’s style guide means that basic facts cannot be conveyed, there’s not much hope for anything else, least not a Verify service, especially when led by someone who felt we needed a whole series about the evil ongoings of Totnes.
Elsewhere BBC bumf about Her Royal Me-ness reads: “Marianna is uniquely equipped to navigate Conspiracyland, having found herself on the frontlines of the battle of online disinformation and hate since those early days of the pandemic. She herself has become a frequent target of this movement - this podcast is no exception.” It could also be that Spring is wrong and annoying. But, hey, I’m not a disinformation expert.
Brutal. 10/10