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The hypocrisy of the BBC’s misinformation war Marianna Spring is as dogmatic as her trolls

Has Spring fallen down the rabbit hole? Royal Television Society

Has Spring fallen down the rabbit hole? Royal Television Society


March 7, 2024   6 mins

In 1999, Glenn Hoddle, the then England football manager, told The Times’s Matt Dickinson that he thought people with disabilities had done bad things in a previous life. Hoddle had spoken before about his spiritual beliefs, and it was a matter of public record that he had used a faith healer called Eileen Drewery. “You and I have been physically given two hands and two legs and half-decent brains,” he said, clarifying: “Some people have not been born like that for a reason. The karma is working from another lifetime.” Hoddle was duly fired and the purification ritual that followed — he was potently vilified as a heartless crank — was a premonition of cancellation culture.

If the same incident replayed today — let’s imagine that the spirit of Glenn has possessed the mind of Gareth — the purification ritual would be just as intense, but its rhetorical architecture would be different. The manager would be called out for disseminating dangerous misinformation. Anti-hate NGOs and think-tanks would conduct rapid-reaction research on how many social media accounts “liked” and shared the manager’s hateful narrative. And Marianna Spring, the BBC’s indefatigable disinformation journalist, would no doubt launch a special investigation to expose all the harm caused, especially to women and minorities with disabilities.

Misinformation, or whatever you want to call it, has always existed. The difference today, as Spring explains in her book, Among the Trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland, is that it’s now “turbocharged”, spreading at a rate and volume hitherto unprecedented, thanks to the internet and social media. At the same time, an entire industry of journalists, academics and experts has arisen to hunt down, track and police misinformation. In some ways, this industry is just as creepy and alarming as the conspiracy culture it gorges on, mirroring its familiar pathologies of distortion and hyperbole.

Spring’s book shines a vivid light onto the assumptions and biases of those who toil away in it. This isn’t, of course, the book’s purpose. Spring’s aim, rather, is to journey into conspiracyland and to speak to its inhabitants in order to better understand who they are and how they got there. Her intention is also to show that what goes on in conspiracyland can cause suffering far beyond it. Often, she steps into the centre of her own story, relaying all the voluminous hate that she herself has received as a result of her reporting. She even reaches out to several of her trolls to understand their motives.

“In some ways, this industry is just as creepy and alarming as the conspiracy culture it engorges on”

Spring argues that disinformation (i.e. deliberate lying) doesn’t just cause harm to private citizens and journalists like herself, but threatens the very fabric of democracy. She cites the January 6 storming of the US Capitol as a primary example, even though democracy didn’t in fact die in darkness on that day — and the chance of Trump’s motley crew of mostly unarmed supporters seizing power was almost zero.

One side-effect of hate, Spring observes, is that it intimidates people and makes them fearful to speak out. She’s right, of course: many people, for example, are afraid to criticise or mock Islam because they’re worried that some Muslim believers might murder them for it, as happened to Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam in 2004 and in Paris in 2015 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, where 12 people were coldly executed by brothers Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kouachi. Many, too, are afraid to criticise the political claims and activities of Islamists, believing — with some warrant — that to do so will incur the damaging and sometimes dangerous charge of “Islamophobia”. This point holds with even greater vehemence within the Islamic fold, where Muslims have been murdered after hateful accusations of blasphemy and apostasy have been levelled against them.

However, Spring doesn’t discuss these examples, intuiting perhaps that were she to do so it wouldn’t be good for business or her personal safety. (“How I Confronted My Jihadi Troll” isn’t happening anytime soon over at BBC Sounds.) Nor does she show any curiosity about the huge, roiling global conspiracy theory called jihadism that has directly led to the deaths of hundreds of British civilians over the last decade and a half — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of Muslims and other minorities it has killed elsewhere across the globe.

The book goes on to argue that because hate undermines free speech it should be censored and that social media companies should be more vigorously pressured by governments to eradicate hate from their platforms. This is a weak and incoherent argument: even controversial ideas, such as the view that some women make poor football pundits, deserve to be protected from censorship. Of course, there are limits to free speech and there are laws that punish speech which causes direct and serious harms, such as incitement to violence, fraud, perjury and defamation. But the kinds of limits Spring has in mind are far more expansive than this and would permit the prohibition of a vast swathe of speech that is offensive but not dangerous. At no point does she consider that prohibiting such speech would itself cause serious harm to the very democratic values she claims to uphold.

Indeed, Among the Trolls is a somewhat repetitive and predictable book written in the tone of a concerned school mistress whose reprimands are more in sorrow than in anger. The conspiracy theorists Spring meets are more banal than demonic, the tech companies she presses for comment are cold and unresponsive bureaucracies, and the ordinary normies who are harassed by conspiracy theorists are all very lovely and relatable.

These clichés of thought are dutifully recorded in clichés of prose. Popular conspiracy theories, we’re informed seven times, “spread like wildfire”, while the people who believe in them have “fallen down the rabbit hole”. One prominent conspiracy theorist, it turns out, “seemed to have gone off the deep end”, while a long-suffering son of another “had reached his wits’ end”.

Spring seems to have fallen down a “rabbit hole” herself. Recent research by academic Sacha Altay and his colleagues shows that, contrary to Spring’s narrative, the internet is not saturated with misinformation, but with memes and entertainment; that falsehoods don’t spread faster than the truth; that people don’t believe everything they see online; that they’re more likely to be uninformed than misinformed; and that the influence of misinformation is exaggerated since it often “preaches to the choir”.

Many of the popular misconceptions identified by Altay inform the overarching narrative of Among the Trolls, and while Spring tries to be non-judgmental toward the conspiracy theorists she meets, especially the “true believers”, her approach is deterministic and a little patronising. Many, she thinks, “are misguided and misled, vulnerable to the worst liars and lies”. Indeed, Spring often suggests that were it not for some wound in their lives they would have never journeyed to conspiracyland.

“Conspiracies can be engaging and fun and thrillingly transgressive.”

What this account fails to capture is not only the agency of those in conspiracyland, but also its intrinsic appeal to those who jump towards it. Conspiracy culture, for those who are part of it, offers a profound spiritual enlargement of the world, imbuing it with hidden meanings, mysteries and secrets. Conspiracies can be engaging and fun and thrillingly transgressive. But you wouldn’t know this from reading Among the Trolls.

Anyone who touts themself as a disinformation journalist will inevitability be accused of purveying disinformation. Spring’s online critics have said the same about her, and when it transpired that she had once told a lie to advance her career — she’d made something up on her CV — many sought to make a great deal of hay out of it. There are no lies in Among the Trolls, as far as I could tell, but there are several instances when Spring trades in what she herself would call misinformation. One of these concerns the racist abuse targeted at England’s black players after the Euro 2021 final against Italy, which England lost on penalties. She writes that “a mural that honoured [Marcus] Rashford in Withington, the suburb of Manchester where he’d grown up, was defaced”, strongly implying that this was motivated by racism. It wasn’t.

But the deeper problem with Among the Trolls relates to its sins of omission. It is here that the inherent political bias of Spring’s wider enterprise reveals itself. “I’m driven by exposing disinformation, hate and polarisation that cause serious harm and often reach a significant number of people,” she writes. Yet only insofar as it has a Right-wing valence, for Spring has little interest in conspiracy theories or misinformation that lean Left. This reflects a broader selectivity bias among disinformation journalists, for whom, as the statistician and writer Nate Silver has observed, the “term ‘misinformation’ nearly always signifies conservative arguments (which may or may not be actual misinfo)”.

There isn’t much self-awareness or self-doubt in Among the Trolls. Spring notes that conspiracy theories thrive because of a distrust of mainstream media. This is surely true, but she doesn’t recognise that the kind of politicised journalism she engages in helps deepen that distrust. On a few occasions when she meets the denizens of conspiracyland, she pushes them to defend their beliefs with evidence and then gently chides them when they cannot. Yet it never seems to occur to her that she, too, has beliefs or that those beliefs, which closely adhere to the official consensus that now underpins all elite institutions, require any kind of defence. Rather, she just assumes that they are true — and that any deviation from them amounts to misinformation.

Despite the best efforts of disinformation journalists, conspiracyland is here to stay: the demand for it is just too great. People want and like conspiracies — and nobody more so than those who make a lucrative and celebrated career out of finding and exposing them.


Simon Cottee is a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Kent.


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Derek Smith
Derek Smith
6 months ago

‘Misinformation’ and its variants have become an elite moral panic, particularly since 2016.

For a good summary of how we got to this point, there’s an excellent article at the Tablet Magazine site by Jacob Siegel, titled ‘A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century’.

It’s long – at least 3 cups of tea – but well worth the read, and you wouldn’t be contributing to Marianna Spring’s wallet.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
6 months ago
Reply to  Derek Smith

I love the way you measure the length of an article by how many cups of tea you’ll need to get to the end.
All British publications should state this figure at the start of their articles. Far more insightful than those minutes…

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
6 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Ah, but it all depends on whether a pot is brewed from which three cupfuls can be poured, or whether three separate cups are brewed.
Difference ~10 minutes.

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
6 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

But is Three Cups of Tea in fact three cups of tea long? Katharine, I put it to you that it is not.

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
6 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

I should have said ‘mugs’ of tea for that article – it’s that long!

Malcolm Webb
Malcolm Webb
6 months ago

Excellent article. Thank you for pointing out the hypocrisy and bringing some balance to the debate on this issue

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago

None of this is a cogent argument against Spring’s work. It’s the same old tedious call to hypocrisy mixed with the epistemological nihilism that permits disinformation in the first place.
If you want to know the truth Spring is a valuable advocate of the cause. If you stand to benefit from disinformation you advance the “what is the truth anyway??” line as the author does.
As to the criticism that she doesn’t investigate left-wing conspiracies I would be interested to know what exactly they are in a way that doesn’t validate horseshoe theory. What exactly are the MAGAs doing when refusing more money for Ukraine and Israel if not siding with left-wing conspiracies against american imperialism and the military industrial complex?
The weirdo trumpy right have appropriated all the Left’s conspiracy theories. We were criticising the elites way before the MAGAs. The hard-right just do it in a way that infuses it with base racism and nazi science.
A case in point is the “Marianna in conspiracyland” where she finds that a lefty hippy town in the west country (I think) have fallen victim to right-wing conspiracy theories. I believe rather it is the other way around. The right have adopted left-wing conspiracy theories and rolled the “State” in with the illuminati and Rothschilds.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

A case in point is the “Marianna in conspiracyland” where she finds that a lefty hippy town in the west country (I think) have fallen victim to right-wing conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately that anecdote is even more unconvincing than most of the others.

Jim C
Jim C
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

As usual, people attempting to prove something by pigeon-holing it as “left” or “right” wing make a hash of it.
A typical “Left-wing” conspiracy is the Russia! Russia! Russia! collusion hoax, as it was pushed by people who self-described as “Left wing”.
But how many people actually describe themselves as right-wing now? Most of the conspiracy theories decried as “right-wing” are nothing of the sort.

What exactly are the MAGAs doing when refusing more money for Ukraine and Israel if not siding with left-wing conspiracies against american imperialism and the military industrial complex?

Maybe they just don’t think it’s their government’s job to divert taxpayer funds to help other countries? That – if anything is – can surely be described as a “Right-wing” (anti-collectivist) position, even if the outcome is the same as Left-wingers’ dislike of US imperialism and the MIC.
PS – disagreeing with Spring’s laughably simplistic assumptions of what is or isn’t true is not “epistemological nihilism”.

Adrian Smith
Adrian Smith
6 months ago

The “misinformation” I like the most is the sort that they admit is true but is likely to lead (less intelligent than them) people to draw the wrong conclusion and is therefore far more “dangerous” than stuff that is obviously false.
Free speech means hearing things you don’t like – grow a thicker skin. History has shown that when free speech dies soon after the “undesirables” start dying.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
6 months ago

She surely exemplifies how far the BBC has fallen; a person of limited intellectual ability with delusions of grandeur who pushes predictably Leftist narratives, never does any real investigative journalism, writes poorly in fact-lite cliché-ridden English and features her boring, bland, personality-lite self at the centre of everything she does.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

> person of limited intellectual ability with delusions of grandeur who pushes predictable ad hominems.
She must play a great game because she’s managed to convince Oxford, multiple leading news organisations and many prize-givers of her ability.
Oh silly me, those are all elites recognising one of their own and probably doing something woke too.
I’m usually impressed by her but that’s probably because I don’t have an innate bias against (or for!) capable young women or maybe it’s my own limited intellectual ability.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Oh silly me, those are all elites recognising one of their own and probably doing something woke too.

Yep, that is precisely what is happening. Well done.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

It always is!

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I confess I am a little surprised that you are taken in by this ‘disinformation’ stuff. It’s so painfully obvious what it is.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

I don’t actually believe in the anti-woke populist stuff. I was being sarcastic.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Of course you don’t. But you’ll believe anything the establishment media tells you: women have penises, George Floyd was murdered, five people died in the Capitol riot, open borders is not class war, Islam is a religion of peace, Saddam has WMDs, the Libyan coup was a ‘humanitarian intervention’, black people built Stonehenge, Covid did not come from a lab, October 7th was a false flag …
Won’t you?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Uhh no. Can’t say that I have seen much establishment media saying much of that stuff. Ironically a lot of the sources that now claim to be anti-elite (e.g. Fox, Telegraph) were the ones pushing the narratives I can identify as having actually appeared in the establishment media. Can’t say much for those bizarre things you’ve pulled from your facebook feed though.
But then I was a “conspiracy theorist” before the right-wing attached all their weird inferiority complex stuff to it and made it uncool.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

What on earth are you on about? Bit early to be on the sauce, isn’t it?

Alan Elgey
Alan Elgey
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Of the 10 things he mentions I can clearly recall such reports in the establishment media for 8 of them.

Jim C
Jim C
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Which religion is a religion “of peace”, just out of curiosity?

Jae
Jae
6 months ago
Reply to  Jim C

Definitely not the one that constantly claims to be.

Alan Elgey
Alan Elgey
6 months ago
Reply to  Jim C

Well that one came notably from the mouth of the then PM, David Cameron, on the sad occasion of the murder of David Haines; it can be sourced on gov.uk. You can’t get much more establishment than that.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

For sarcasm to work it has to be recognised; you need to work on your irony!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

He knew it was sarcasm he just twisted himself in his own irony.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

What does that mean? It’s you, isn’t it? You are Marianna Spring! I thought I recognised something in the writing style. Well ,well.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Whet exactly don’t you believe? Do you support open borders, net zero, CRT/DEI, Covid lockdowns?

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Gotta say what she does is no different than Libs of TikTok – exposing fringe people. The big difference, of course, is no one in the regime media would ever cover anything by Libs of TikTok.

Jae
Jae
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

You actually managed to show some perception here. Must be a first.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

You’re being much too kind.

Tony Price
Tony Price
6 months ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

How very mealy-mouthed. Have you actually listened to her broadcasts? It is clearly ridiculous to suggest that she has ‘limited intellectual ability’ – she comes across really well.

Jae
Jae
6 months ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Well, only if you just scratch the surface and agree with her.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago

Just noting that my reasoned, rational and perfectly polite comment criticising this article has been deleted.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It has now reappeared. Not that it’ll have any chance to float about the other comments nowt though. Unheard indeed.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Not that it’ll have any chance to float about the other comments nowt though. 

Well, a lunchtime pint is fine – but you should try not to overdo it.

JOHN KANEFSKY
JOHN KANEFSKY
6 months ago

The trouble is, most people only care about misinformation that affects adversely what they want to happen or believe. They are perfectly happy when it supports their politics, the team they support or whatever else motivates them.
’twas ever thus.

Caroline Ayers
Caroline Ayers
6 months ago
Reply to  JOHN KANEFSKY

No things are radically different now – watch Tucker Carlson’s jaw dropping interview with Mike Benz about the military-industrial-censorship complex….

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago

What the book really reveals is that she’s a bit dim – there isn’t a single original or intelligent insight in the entire thing. No-one who describes the rather sad little riot that took place in Washington on January 6th 2021 as an ‘insurrection’ should be taken in the least bit seriously. She makes Justin Webb look like Bertrand Russell.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Have you read it? It was only released today. I admire your thirst for truth in procuring an advance copy or already having devoured its few hundred pages in a couple of hours.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Nope. PDFs have been floating around for several weeks. I’ll describe the contents for you in detail if you like.

Tony Price
Tony Price
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Have you read it?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Yep.

Aidan Trimble
Aidan Trimble
6 months ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Are you in a relationship with Ms Spring ? You seem to take umbrage at even gentle criticism. Are you ok if I spread this misinformation ?

Tony Price
Tony Price
6 months ago
Reply to  Aidan Trimble

Sadly I have never either met or communicated with her in any way, however the statement ‘there isn’t a single original or intelligent insight in the entire thing’ sounds like preposterous hyperbole to me. Whenever I have caught her wireless broadcasts I have enjoyed them, and she sounds plenty intelligent enough to me.

Rocky Martiano
Rocky Martiano
6 months ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Hi Tony, I have a bridge to sell you.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Read it. You don’t seem like a gullible fool. I’m sure you’ll find it just as childish and fraudulent as I did.

Jae
Jae
6 months ago
Reply to  Tony Price

“ and she sounds plenty intelligent enough to me”

That alone explains why you like her.

David Giles
David Giles
6 months ago

Is this the same Marianna Spring who has only this week stumbled across a Donald Trump parody account, mistaken it for a real account and broadcast it as an example of misinformation? Is she therefore not an inadvertent purveyor of misinformation herself?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  David Giles

Read the book. It’s full of passages like this describing a supposed victim of misinformation:

I met Adam on a freezing cold day in that same Quarry. We sat on a bench close to where he had last seen Gary, and Adam told me how they used to paint together and discuss ideas. Kindred spirits in some ways, but different in other respects. ‘This wasn’t somebody with tinfoil on [his] head. This was a very intelligent chap,’ Adam explained, casting his eyes over the river and the frosty pastures of the park.

It’s full of passages like that. Christian names only. No hard evidence of anything whatsoever. Childish and manipulative drivel.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Plus, overuse of narrative description (place, weather, etc.) in an attempt to sound convincing. It fails utterly.

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Perhaps she was referring to the Biblical Adam.
And, presumably, to the Biblical Gary.

2 plus 2 equals 4
2 plus 2 equals 4
6 months ago

The BBC is right to be concerned about misinformation.
I heard about a case the other day where a state-broadcaster, in concert with other media outlets and even police authorities, mis-recorded and misreported violent men’s crimes as having been committed by women. Apparently this is part of a wider collusion involving multiple state agencies, private media organisations, and special interest groups to compel that country’s population to affirm their belief that human beings can actually change sex at will!
I can’t remember the name of the state-broadcaster or country involved, but I hope Ms Spring investigates urgently.

Mark Cornish
Mark Cornish
6 months ago

Spot on. The BBC sets itself up as some kind of moral compass, then can’t even state biological facts. It’s an appalling state of affairs and the fact that the BBC does not even recognise it’s staggering hypocrisy astounds me.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
6 months ago

Indeed.
I, myself, have also observed the strangely archaic and ritualistic self-flagellation phenomena of certain organizations as they not only promote the denial of biological and evolutionary reality, foundational maths, physics and other scientific truths, and even general historical records, but also actively search out and suppress those who rationally choose to believe of their own accord such basic truths that took our species eons to discover and comprehend.
It seems that Ms Spring has within her grasp the journalistic scoop of the millennium if she would merely choose to investigate and report her findings on such organizations. I can only wish her the very best in this worthy quest.

Matt M
Matt M
6 months ago

It all goes back to about 2009 or 2010 when the BBC declared that it was no longer going to air climate-sceptic opinions in its news broadcasts. The science was settled! All contrary opinion was verboten! The BBC’s job was to push the global warming, climate change, climate emergency message at every opportunity.
It was only a small step from shutting down any discussion about theoretical man-made global warming to shutting down any discussion about Covid Lockdowns, transvestism, dead American armed robbers, the glorious legacy of the British Empire and so on.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  Matt M

Well, according to Marianna Spring:

Matthew saw ‘Covid and climate propaganda’ as part of the same so-called plot being waged by the rich and powerful across the world. In his view, the world leaders leaders and billionaires were all in on it. But like with others I’ve interviewed, when I tried to drill down to the specifics he shied away from giving too much detail about this alleged cabal.

Who is this ‘Matthew’? We’re not told. The entire book is one long sequence of utterly implausible anecdotes where no-one tells us their name or goes on the record. It’s extraordinary that this woman is allowed to call herself a journalist.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Makes you wonder if Matthew is not a straw man that she built in order to showcase the righteousness of her arguments. Is there some doubt that the covid and climate cults have a high degree of membership overlap?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

The book is full of these implausible first-name-only characters whose ‘views’ perfectly fit her narrative.

Dorothy More
Dorothy More
6 months ago
Reply to  Matt M

You omitted the global cooling narrative from the mid 1970s.

Dylan Blackhurst
Dylan Blackhurst
6 months ago

Question.
What do we do when the official line eg ‘truth’ turns out to be false.
And the conspiracy theory (aka misinformation) turns out to be correct?
At this point our BBC Misinformation Czar is going to look pretty stupid.
And what makes something misinformation anyway?
Who decides?
Did Covid come from a lab or wet market?
At one point it was considered a conspiracy theory to suggest a lab. When in actual fact, it now looks the most probable.
The CIA having a role in the other throw of the Ukrainian government in 2014 is often spoken about. Is it true. I don’t know. Is that a conspiracy theory?
This seems ridiculous.
It’s all so ambiguous.
And the idea that we have put a 28 year old in charge of this seems completely bizarre.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago

a 28 year old

If you were to read the thing you’d find it hard to believe she isn’t 14.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

The book must really have had an impact on you as you have started writing like a teenager too.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

That’s a rather infantile and silly thing to say – even by your standards.

Dennis Roberts
Dennis Roberts
6 months ago

When the covid virus was first analysed to determine where it came from, the original finding was that it hadn’t been engineered. This is, to my knowledge, correct and that was how it was originally reported. However, it soon (just days IIRC) morphed into being ‘it didn’t come from a lab’. I don’t know why or who was responsible for that change in message. It could just be a journalstic misunderstanding of the science – it’s startling how things like that happen sometimes.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
Reply to  Dennis Roberts

I do remember the BBC or Guardian reporting the lab hypothesis and that a leading science guy said he had identified signatures which could only be seen in a lab-developed/modified virus.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Can you provide date and time? No? It didn’t happen, did it?

Tony Price
Tony Price
6 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Of course, because that doesn’t fit your narrative.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  Tony Price

My narrative is based on Occam’s Razor: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it’s a f*in duck.

Jae
Jae
6 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Hahahaha, typical leftist behaviour. The left denied it came from a lab and lampooned anyone who said it did. Even bona fide scientists. But now we know the truth, they’ll try to back pedal so they don’t look like the lying, deceitful and unquestioning stooges of government they actually are.

Caroline Ayers
Caroline Ayers
6 months ago
Reply to  Dennis Roberts

Im surprised you still think it’s correct that Covid 19 didn’t come from a lab. The evidence that it was man made (furin cleavage site/GOF funding/Fauci’s untrue Lancet article about animal origins/Dasak/Eco Health Alliance/DARPA …. etc) is OVERWHELMING. But no doubt you are not aware of this because we dont have normal investigative journalism any more – the MSM doesn’t report anything that contradicts the government’s narrative. It’s really bad news for democracy (and for our health) going forward. What will be launched on us next?

Dennis Roberts
Dennis Roberts
6 months ago
Reply to  Caroline Ayers

You should read my post again as I haven’t said that I don’t think it came from a lab. I said that I knew of no evidence that it was engineered. A virus doesn’t need to be engineered to have leaked from a lab.

There is certainly not overwhelming evidence that the covid virus was engineered – the furin cleavage site change probably occurred by natural selection see https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(23)00144-1/fulltext .

The point of my comment was that the reporting changed from the initial ‘it’s not engineered’ to ‘it didn’t leak from a lab’, which doesn’t follow logically. The lack of evidence for it being engineered says nothing about whether it leaked from a lab (though obviously it it was found to have been engineered then it must have been through a lab).

However, given that there was an institute conducting coronavirus research right where the outbreak started, the leak hypothesis is certainly plausible.

Rocky Martiano
Rocky Martiano
6 months ago
Reply to  Dennis Roberts

The lab leak theory (since verified as most likely by the FBI) was the subject of a virulent takedown campaign by Fauci, Collins et al at the CDC as soon as it appeared. It’s easy enough to Google the leaked emails which show the evidence for this, it’s even been admitted by Francis Collins in an interview.

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
6 months ago

I can’t wait for the day when hundreds of BBC (and CBC – Poilievre!) journalists are handed their P45s and the organization is stripped of public subsidy. It’s uncharitable – and not very Christian. And I do hope they find alternative employment soon after. But I will bring out the Champagne (and if Champagne Socialist – the teenage troll in these comment pages, sheds a tear, so much the better).

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
6 months ago

I used to belong to an (American) fact checker before I realised that they were simply not very good. The last straw was when they wrote about eugenics, and informed their readership that this was a right wing idea invented By American writers in 1960. I tried to write back to correct this but they never did. Just out of interest, eugenics was first propounded by T Huxley in about 1888, and eagerly adopted by the Fabian group of left wing socialists , in Britain.. And furthermore, for anyone with a love of political discourse, read GK Chesterton’s excoriating piece of amazing rhetoric attacking the eugenics movement. Oh wait, wasnt he a conspiracy theorist?

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
6 months ago
Reply to  Anna Bramwell

Eugenics was propounded by Plato, and the term itself was invented by Francis Galton in 1883.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
6 months ago
Reply to  Anna Bramwell

eagerly adopted by the Fabian group of left wing socialists , in Britain

… who thought Stalin was Jesus and it was time to sterilise the working class. Socialists, eh? Don’t you just love ’em.

Christopher Thompson
Christopher Thompson
6 months ago
Reply to  Anna Bramwell

The oh-so morally superior Swedes pursued a eugenics-based sterilisation policy between 1906 and 1975.

Mark 0
Mark 0
6 months ago

This is a great point re Sweden. I remember Bernie Sanders and his fans used to bang on about Sweden, but were clueless about the real Sweden, they seemed only interested in the socialist Sweden of their imaginations. If only they’d looked it up they’d have seen that
A) it was a lot more into free enterprise than anyone realises. The generous welfare state is not paid for with magic
B) it was nearly brought to its knees in the late 80s by pretty far left wingers and their Bernie-esque ruinous policies
C) it has, like all countries, some regrettable parts of its history, like the aforementioned sterilisation programme. Right up to the mid 70s, long, long after Nazism had been defeated!

anna moore
anna moore
6 months ago

Her certainty that her view is objectively correct, backed up by which ever experts she chooses to consult or discard, does my head in. I guess she’s just so young. She thinks she knows!! Her podcast on covid misinformation was so deeply flawed.. I guess if she’s from the BBC, she accepts that men can be women and vice versa too.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
6 months ago
Reply to  anna moore

Exactly! Just like the muppet on the BBC that ‘took Elon Musk to task’ about the increase of ‘hate speech’ on Twitter but couldn’t actually give a single example.

They’re all like teenagers who are absolutely convinced of everything and wouldn’t see anything that opposes their view if it was waved in front of them.

They’ve never, ever been challenged or been made to recant anything nor taught to genuinely dig down into a topic with an open mind (see problems with universities).

William Shaw
William Shaw
6 months ago

“because hate undermines free speech it should be censored”
Just one of several statements that Spring might want to rethink.

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
6 months ago

Based on the past twenty or so years, it would seem a ‘conspiracy theory’ is the truth that the powers that be, do not want you to know. The Jan 6th protest was not by any measure an insurrection, more like a Fedsurrection (from all the info that is being released); Covid was not a pandemic for all ages, it was a coronavirus flu which primarily affected the aged with comobids ; Pres. Trump’s Russian collusion was a hoax plain and simple. Finally I coming round to believe that Climate warming is no more than the earth experiencing climate change as it has done for billions of years in a cyclic pattern. Where ever I look at a conspiracy theory, I seen bureaucratic and/or institutional corruption, propaganda and black money. it is noted that the designation ‘conspiracy theory’ always comes from the Government, Institutions or State Media. Luckily the game is now almost over, Marianna Spring has come a little late to the game.
As Matt M wisely opined, it is all about shutting down discussion. Be wary when anyone used the words ‘conspiracy theory’ or xxxxx-denier. It is almost certainly true and not misinformation.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
6 months ago

As the author correctly surmises “it never seems to occur to her that she, too, has beliefs or that those beliefs, which closely adhere to the official consensus that now underpins all elite institutions, require any kind of defence. Rather, she just assumes that they are true — and that any deviation from them amounts to misinformation.”
But there is something more sinister at work here. This is one of the opening salvos in a move to use the term misinformation to censor and then persecute anyone who opposes the elite consensus.
I remember a conversation that posed as a debate on Radio 4 a good number of years ago about how ridiculous it was that the requirement in the BBC charter for balance required them to give airtime to climate change deniers and within months they had stopped doing so

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
6 months ago

Misinformation, or whatever you want to call it, has always existed.
and it most commonly flows from people who accuse others of trafficking in it – politicians, activists, and media people.

Adrian Smith
Adrian Smith
6 months ago

Here is the sort of balanced BBC documentary (made in 2017) on the trans issue that just won’t get made anymore. It is not available on BBC I Player:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x58s24i

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
6 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Smith

The trans cult has a lot of money behind it, not least the Pritzker family, members of which include the Governor of Illinois, another member who is transgender and head of the Hyatt hotel group, and yet another who sits on the Harvard Corporation Board and was responsible for the hiring of Claudine Gay as Harvard president. Many of our institutions have been co-opted by similar figures; unfortunately many people are wholly unaware of what is happening and are content to believe that we are led by those who have no problem lecturing us on how profanity and debasement is progress. These are not nice people.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
6 months ago

Conspiracies are far from “engaging, fun, and thrillingly transgressive.” They are deadly, and they are not hypothetical. A theory is formed to explain what is already shown in the data. We’ve seen these theories play out time and time again, yet the term conspiracy theory is used to smear as crackpottery deviation from the approved lie.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
6 months ago

Excellent essay. I strongly disagree with the author on one point; Spring and her sort of infinitely more creepy and subversive than the conspiracy peddlers she is supposedly saving the world from. She has institutional power and the full weight of the state behind her. The regime media doesn’t even pretend to speak truth to power anymore. It’s the propaganda arm for the NGOs and bureaucrats running the show.

tom j
tom j
6 months ago

“One of these concerns the racist abuse targeted at England’s black players after the Euro 2021 final against Italy, which England lost on penalties.”
Oh man they loved piling on this one. Our liberal overlords held their noses and pretended to care about the match, but truly came alive once they had this excuse to lay into the disappointed working classes.

Aidan Trimble
Aidan Trimble
6 months ago
Reply to  tom j

And it was very quickly glossed over that the overwhelming majority of the abuse came from outside the UK, meaning we had to endure legions of social media pronouncements telling us how racist we all were.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
6 months ago

In 2001, the BBC notoriously reported that a building (WTC7) had collapsed when it was still standing. It collapsed inexplicably soon after. Perhaps Ms Spring would like to explain what was misinformation and what was premonition.

Mike Smith
Mike Smith
6 months ago

Heaven forbid she might investigate how it was that such a lightly damaged building as WTC7 collapsed so tidily.

Timothy Baker
Timothy Baker
6 months ago

Marcus Rushfod could easily have put the ball in the net, has the talent. Instead he displayed his immaturity by making a production number and lost the game. He has recently demonstrated that he is still immature. A great shame, he is certainly talented and a basically decent young man. He just needs to grow up.

Martin Johnson
Martin Johnson
6 months ago

We keep hearing about how today’s speedy spread of information, and therefore misinformation, is unprecedented. Not so. In 1919, when the victors at Versailles announced that Shandong would go to Japan rather than China, thousands of Chinese students were marching in the streets of Beijing THE NEXT DAY. This was a world still connected by telegraph.
The people peddling this are, themselves, conducting disinformation to advance their own interests.

Rachel Taylor
Rachel Taylor
6 months ago

Yes, the idea of “misinformation” comes from a childlike certainty in their own virtue. It would be charming in an eight year old, dangerous in an eighteen year old, and just plain stupid in a twenty-eight year old.

Martin M
Martin M
6 months ago
Reply to  Rachel Taylor

I don’t think that is really accurate. If I were to make something up and disseminate it in order to achieve political advantage, or to push some private barrow, surely “misinformation” is an adequate description for it?

Chipoko
Chipoko
6 months ago

Ms Spring’s trajectory:
Born female …Upper middle-class parents (doctor daddy) … posh private school … Oxbridge … BBC.
The epitome of Woking Class destiny!

Paul Marriott
Paul Marriott
6 months ago
Reply to  Chipoko

… Oxbridge… (MI5 recruitment?)… BBC.

Mark 0
Mark 0
6 months ago

This a great article. I hadn’t thought of Jihadism as a giant conspiracy theory but I guess it is. I suppose widening that thought leads to the conclusion that all religion is a little conspiracist too but these are mostly harmless (in line with many points made in the article; “they can be engaging and fun…”

I know lots of people like Spring, well-meaning middle class evangelists who can’t see that banning thoughts and conversations they don’t like has much wider unintended consequences. They would just have to look at China and the problems brought on by the Chinese Communist Party for evidence of this but the CCP is another blind spot for people like her – happy to get angry and make false, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about imagined Israeli run ‘concentration camps’ in Gaza but oblivious to the fact that China runs actual concentration camps. It really is quite Orwellian.

Jae
Jae
6 months ago

Erm, shouldn’t she be investigating the BBC who just presented a child rapist as a victim? Sounds like disinformation of the worst kind to me.

Also, how do you give any credence to someone who lied on their CV. It’s not the worst offense out there, but if you choose to pontificate to others, you should be far more up for scrutiny and judgement. Especially since you’re advocating to curtail the freedom and speech of others in society.

Robin Young
Robin Young
6 months ago

Spring and the BBC are well versed in “sins of omission”. Because of its ‘progressive’ mission, the BBC failed to report widely on Jo Phoenix’s tribunal win despite a 150-page-plus deposition that highlighted some seriously nasty tactics by the gender ideologues. They have also ignored the recent WPATH files story that heavily criticises the reflex “gender affirmation” policy pushed on the NHS by activists.

Jae
Jae
6 months ago

One question that should be asked. Is the BBC and the Guardian, among others, manned exclusively by university educated Leftists who condescend to those they see as beneath them and believe they know everything and should control all narratives?

If so don’t listen to a word they say.

Or would they classify that question as a “Conspiracy.”

Martin M
Martin M
6 months ago
Reply to  Jae

That reminds me of the exchange in “Yes, Prime Minister”: – Hacker “The White House thinks that the Foreign Office is full of pinkos and traitors”. Bernard – “No, it’s not. Well, not full”.

D Oliver
D Oliver
6 months ago

Great piece. It is apparent that the likes of Ms Spring are political activists who are motivated by ideology and not by pursuit of the truth.