Award-winning ‘disinformation expert’ disinformed on CV, says report
A mainstream media “disinformation expert” is accused of lying on her CV to gain employment, a report revealed last week.
BBC Disinformation Correspondent Marianna Spring was looking for work in 2018 and applied to US-based news site Coda Story for a role as a Moscow stringer. Spring tried to deceive Editor-in-Chief Natalia Antelava by claiming on her CV to have worked with BBC Correspondent Sarah Rainsford on covering the World Cup.
“June 2018: Reported on International News during the World Cup, specifically the perception of Russia, with BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford,” read Spring’s CV entry.
But the claim was false — Spring had only run into Rainsford on a few occasions in social settings. Antelava discovered the truth after placing a phone call to Rainsford and then confronted Spring, who sent back a groveling apology for her “awful misjudgment.”
“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,” Spring wrote in an email, according to The New European. She assured Antelava that she was still “a brilliant reporter.”
“There’s absolute no excuse at all, and I’m really sorry again,” Spring added. “The only explanation at all is my desperation to report out in Moscow, and thinking that it wouldn’t be a big deal, which was totally naive and stupid of me. I’m really sorry again for this awful misjudgment on my part.”
Antelava was not receptive.
“Telling me you are a brilliant reporter who exercises integrity and honesty when you have literally demonstrated the opposite was a terrible idea,” she replied. “I am sure if you use this as a lesson, things will work out,” she added, passing on Spring's application.
Spring has since been featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list and was part of a team that won the Royal Television Society award. She runs her own BBC podcast and her first book is due to be published next year. She has presented several documentaries, including one on “the scare tactics of anti-vaxxers.”
In May Spring led the launch of BBC Verify, a new “disinformation” branch aimed at destroying Right-leaning alternative media outlets.
“Mistruths can cause really serious harm to society and to the people in them,” she said in a video posted to Twitter announcing the launch. Spring revealed that she uses fake social media accounts with personas on the political Right, Left, and Center which are used “to understand polarization online.”
She then pointed to a screen which displayed a “disinformation” outline with “Alternative Media” at the center.
“At the moment I’m investigating the UK’s conspiracy theory movement,” she said. “I’m trying to understand how it’s evolved and intensified since the pandemic here in the UK. I’m looking at the alternative media, which finds itself at the heart of this movement and a conspiracy theory newspaper that’s a part of that as well.”
To dispel any doubt, Spring clarified that she is investigating Right-leaning alternative media.
“I’m looking at the way that alternative media is funded, I’m looking at its impact on local communities, I’m looking at its connections with far-Right figures and also its foreign links.”
