80% Of The BBC’s Online Abuse Is Addressed To One Female Journalist: “It’s Normal To Hate Me”
deadline.comA female BBC journalist has discovered that she receives more than 80% of all the online abuse received by the entire corporation.
Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first disinformation and social media correspondent, tells The Times newspaper that, during the first six months of this year alone, she received more than 11,771 personal slurs.
She tells the newspaper: “It’s really normal to really hate me.” Such abuse spiked earlier this year following Spring’s appearance in a BBC documentary, measuring the increase in hate and disinformation on Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover.
Musk tweeted: “Sorry for turning Twitter from nurturing paradise into a place that has… trolls.” Despite receiving threatening and hostile messages on a daily basis, Spring tells The Times she has to consider whether or not to block people: “I think there’s something about blocking people that means they can be, like, ‘Oh, you’re not open to a conversation.’” And she says such a level of trolling won’t stop her work: “There are loads of people who get awful online abuse.
Read more on deadline.com