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Marianna Spring

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Marianna Spring
Born (1996-02-21) 21 February 1996 (age 28)
EducationPembroke College, Oxford
OccupationJournalist

Marianna Spring (born 21 February 1996) is a British broadcast journalist. She is the BBC's first disinformation specialist and social media correspondent.

Early life

Spring was born on 21 February 1996.[1][2] Her father is a doctor and her mother is a family therapist and former nurse.[3] She grew up in Sutton, South London, and has a younger sister.[2][3] Spring said she developed an interest in journalism at the age of eight, and would watch BBC World News while on holiday.[4]

Spring attended Sutton High School, London, and became involved in a programme run by Newsquest for young journalists, winning an award for best news article of 2011 by a Year Eleven student.[5] Spring was also a ball girl at Wimbledon while at school.[6] She studied French and Russian at Pembroke College, Oxford (matriculating in 2014)[7] and wrote for and edited the student newspaper Cherwell.[8] While there, Spring won the Ronnie Payne Prize for Outstanding Foreign Reporting in 2017,[9] and later spent her year abroad in Yaroslavl (Russia), and Paris, contributing news articles to The Moscow Times, The Local, and Le Tarn Libre.[10][11] Spring undertook work experience at The Guardian and Private Eye.[8][12]

Career

After graduation, she applied for various journalism programmes including at the BBC but was not successful.[13] Senior news reporter for The Guardian Alexandra Topping suggested that Spring contact various BBC journalists that she admired. Emily Maitlis replied to Spring and gave her an opportunity to work on Newsnight.[14] She co-produced a segment for the programme, about protesters from across the French political spectrum joining the gilets jaunes, in December 2018.[15]

"The focus of my job is to humanise disinformation and explain its impact to viewers, listeners and readers."

Spring describing her role in March 2021[16]

In March 2020, she was appointed the BBC's first specialist disinformation and social media reporter, which followed the establishment of similar roles at American news organisations such as CNN and NBC.[16] In 2021, Spring began working as a reporter for the investigative current affairs programme Panorama, and was selected by Forbes magazine as one of their "30 Under 30" in the Media and Marketing category.[17][18]

She was promoted to correspondent in August 2022.[19] Spring was nominated as Young Talent of the Year at the Royal Television Society's Journalism Awards in 2023.[20] In March 2023, she wrote an article for the BBC News on an increase in trolling and online abuse on Twitter under Elon Musk.[21] Musk responded by mockingly tweeting a screenshot of the article.[22] This led to an increase in abuse towards Spring, who told The Sunday Times in August 2023 that according to an internal BBC monitoring system she had received more than 80% of all online abuse directed at BBC journalists in the first six months of the year.[2][23][24]

In September 2023, The New European alleged that Spring had previously lied on a CV when applying for a job in 2018 in Moscow for U.S.-based news website Coda Story.[25][26][27] She had claimed that in 2018 she worked alongside BBC Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford.[26] Following Rainsford's statement that she had only met Spring in social situations, Spring apologised for the "awful misjudgement", and further added, "I've only bumped into Sarah whilst she's working and chatted to her at various points, but nothing more. Everything else on my CV is entirely true".[26]

Since 2022, Spring has been a regular contributor to the BBC podcast and Radio 4 programme Americast, for which using data supplied by the Pew Research Center, she created social media accounts for five "undercover voters" from across the political spectrum in order to report on the content they were receiving.[28][29] Her debut book, Among the Trolls: Notes from the Disinformation Wars, was published by Atlantic Books in March 2024.[30][31]

In April 2024, she was a guest on the first episode of the sixty-seventh series of BBC One satirical panel show Have I Got News for You.[32]

Television

Year(s) Title Role Notes Ref(s)
2021–present Panorama Reporter Episode: "Vaccines: The Disinformation War"
Episode: "Online Abuse: Why Do You Hate Me?"
Episode: "A Social Media Murder: Olly's Story"
Episode: "Disaster Deniers: Hunting the Trolls" 		[17]
[33]
[34]
[35]
2023 The TikTok Effect Presenter [36]

Radio

Year(s) Title Role Notes Ref(s)
2020 How to Cure Viral Misinformation Presenter [37]
2021 The Anti-Vax Files Presenter [38]
2021 The Denial Files Presenter Podcast [39]
2022 Death by Conspiracy? Presenter Podcast [40]
2022 War on Truth Presenter Podcast [41]
2022–present Americast Co-host Podcast [42]
2022 Disaster Trolls Presenter Podcast [43]
2023 Marianna in Conspiracyland Host Podcast [44][45]
2024 Why Do You Hate Me? Presenter [46][47]

References

  1. ^ @mariannaspring (21 February 2021). "25 today! And reported for Panorama for the first time this week – a very exciting first quarter of a century (pandemic permitting)" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 31 October 2022. Retrieved 31 October 2022 – via Twitter.
  2. ^ a b c Spring, Marianna (6 August 2023). "The BBC's Marianna Spring: 'It's really normal to really hate me'". The Sunday Times (Interview). Interviewed by Phoebe Luckhurst. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
  3. ^ a b Williams, Zoe (4 September 2023). "The BBC's Marianna Spring: 'The more violent the rhetoric, the more important it is I expose it'". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  4. ^ Anderson & Spring (2021), 2:00.
  5. ^ Wood, Heloise (27 January 2014). "Young Reporter scheme helps schoolgirl win place at Oxford University". News Shopper. Archived from the original on 31 October 2022. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  6. ^ Fox, Claire (30 June 2010). "Sutton school girl meets the Queen". Your Local Guardian. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  7. ^ "Alumna Marianna Spring Features on Forbes '30 under 30' list". Pembroke College. Oxford. 20 April 2021. Archived from the original on 13 July 2021. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
  8. ^ a b "Our amazing alumnae". Sutton High School. Archived from the original on 22 May 2022. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  9. ^ Brindley, Lynne. "Master's Notes". The Pembroke Record 2016–2017. Oxford: Pembroke College. p. 4.
  10. ^ "Undergraduate Linguist Marianna Spring Becomes News Reporter for The Moscow Times". Pembroke College, Oxford. 5 February 2016. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  11. ^ "Undergraduate Marianna Spring Awarded Ronnie Payne Prize for Outstanding Foreign Reporting". Pembroke College, Oxford. 23 February 2017.
  12. ^ Hancock, Charlie (1 January 2022). "In Conversation with Marianna Spring". Cherwell.
  13. ^ Anderson & Spring (2021), 7:03.
  14. ^ Anderson & Spring (2021), 7:43.
  15. ^ Clayton, James (8 December 2018). "Gilets jaunes: Are nationalists infiltrating the 'yellow vests'?". BBC News. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  16. ^ a b Spring, Marianna (21 March 2021). "My crazy first year down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole". The Sunday Times. London. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  17. ^ a b "Panorama: Vaccines: The Disinformation War". BBC. 20 February 2021. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  18. ^ "Marianna Spring". Forbes. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  19. ^ @mariannaspring (9 August 2022). "Delighted I've been promoted from reporter & I'm now the BBC's first Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent!..." (Tweet). Archived from the original on 8 November 2022. Retrieved 13 November 2022 – via Twitter.
  20. ^ "RTS Television Journalism Awards 2023 in partnership with Wolftech and Dataminr". Royal Television Society. 3 October 2022. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
  21. ^ Spring, Marianna (6 March 2023). "Twitter insiders: We can't protect users from trolling under Musk". BBC News. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 10 August 2023.
  22. ^ Kanter, Jake (6 March 2023). "Elon Musk Says He's 'Laughing His A** Off' At BBC Claim That Trolling Has Gotten Worse On Twitter". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
  23. ^ Swerling, Gabriella (6 August 2023). "It's normal to hate me, says BBC's first disinformation correspondent". The Sunday Telegraph. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
  24. ^ Frost, Caroline (6 August 2023). "80% Of The BBC's Online Abuse Is Addressed To One Female Journalist: 'It's Normal To Hate Me'". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
  25. ^ "When the BBC's disinformation correspondent lied on her CV". The New European. London. 6 September 2023. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  26. ^ a b c Kanter, Jake (8 September 2023). "BBC Disinformation Correspondent Marianna Spring Accused Of Lying On Her Resume". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  27. ^ McTaggart, India (8 September 2023). "BBC's disinformation reporter 'lied on her CV'". The Telegraph. London. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  28. ^ "BBC's Justin Webb, Sarah Smith and Marianna Spring join Americast" (Press release). London: BBC. 12 July 2023 [30 August 2022]. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  29. ^ Spring, Marianna (7 November 2022). "US midterms: How BBC's voter profiles were shown hate and disinformation online". BBC News. London. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  30. ^ Wood, Heloise (13 July 2021). "Spring's disinformation debut goes to Atlantic in three-way auction". The Bookseller. London. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 13 July 2021.
  31. ^ Naughton, John (3 March 2024). "Among the Trolls by Marianna Spring review – into the cesspit of online hatred". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  32. ^ "Have I Got News for You, Series 67, episode 1". BBC One. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 19 June 2024.
  33. ^ "Panorama: Online abuse: Why do you hate me". BBC. 20 October 2021. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 1 June 2022.
  34. ^ "A social media murder: Olly's story". BBC News. 19 June 2022. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
  35. ^ "The UK terror survivors tracked down by 'disaster trolls'". BBC News. 31 October 2022.
  36. ^ "The TikTok Effect". BBC. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
  37. ^ "How to Cure Viral Misinformation". BBC. 24 April 2020. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  38. ^ Sawyer, Miranda (28 March 2021). "Radio roadshow: the Beeb's big move away from London". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  39. ^ "The Denial Files". BBC. Retrieved 1 November 2022.
  40. ^ "Death by Conspiracy?". BBC Sounds. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
  41. ^ "War on Truth". BBC. 25 March 2022. Retrieved 25 March 2022.
  42. ^ "BBC's Justin Webb, Sarah Smith and Marianna Spring join Americast" (Press release). London: BBC. 30 August 2022. Archived from the original on 10 December 2022. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  43. ^ "Disaster Trolls". BBC Sounds. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
  44. ^ "Marianna in Conspiracyland" (Press release). London: BBC. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  45. ^ Sawyer, Miranda (17 June 2023). "The week in audio: Marianna in Conspiracyland; Women of Web3; Gateway: Cocaine, Murder & Dirty Money in Europe; The Archers". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 26 June 2023.
  46. ^ "Why Do You Hate Me?". BBC. London. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  47. ^ Nicol, Patricia (28 January 2024). "Why Do You Hate Me? review — why discord reigns on social media". The Times. London. Retrieved 13 April 2024.

Sources

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