Georgia L Gilholy is a journalist.
I’m no longer sure what polite society’s definition of a ‘troll’ is, but I suspect I now fall under it.
Sangita Myska, an LBC presenter, suggested she had been “trolled by an official Conservative Party account” after the a local Conservative Association’s Twitter profile suggest she had “spectacularly missed the importance” of a news story. What?
When did Britain reach such a civilisational low point that it became possible to gain thousands of supporters and lucrative media slots by whipping up faux outrage about mildly-worded disagreements?
At least this proves Britain is at least capable of maintaining industry, as it has now erected a rather thriving one (by no means limited to the political Left) dedicated to translating people’s errors or perceived slights into click-worthy victimhood – and thus cash.
To see this in action, we need look no further than the corporation that shot Myska to journalistic stardom: the BBC.
I do not consider myself anti-BBC in the way that so many on the Right now do. I value much of its work, particularly its delightfully non-commercial Radio 4 documentaries – possibly the only serious attempts at mainstream programming still being made. I could even stomach its dedicated poll tax, were it being put to proper use.
So whilst I’m sad to see the BBC, like so many of our once robust national institutions, in zombie mode, yet the search for a cure must continue.
That this once treasured body is in need of palliative care was made clear, however, in the widely mocked puff piece on Marianna Spring, the BBC’s “Disinformation Correspondent” in this weekend’s Sunday Times, which confirmed:
“The BBC has a system for monitoring online abuse of its journalists. Software detects correspondence containing physical threats, cyberbullying, violent language, negative sentiment and doxxing, and flags these cases for “escalation” and further assessment.”
No doubt there are many criminals genuinely bent on stalking and directing threats at journalists, especially young female ones. Like Spring, I have encountered plenty of them.
But to focus on this would be to overlook the real revelation of this article: that our national broadcaster now officially believes that disagreeing with one of its journalists is tantamount to irrational hatred or harassment, at risk of “escalation”, legal or otherwise.
This hard-line approach is unlikely to extend to the Corporation itself, which is rightly ridiculed for its routine bias and inaccuracy.
While working at the Jewish Chronicle, I encountered an egregious example of the BBC’s shortcomings when reporting on its editorial failures during its coverage of an attack on an Oxford Street Chanukah party.
For weeks, our national broadcaster refused to correct its lies that Jewish teenagers had provoked their attackers by shouting “dirty Muslims”. They did no such thing, and the BBC only choked up a full apology once they had been repeatedly exposed by other outlets and rebuked by Ofcom.
The BBC’s approach to criticism of Covid policies also put to bed any lingering suggestion of their impartiality.
It seems the demand for a certain type of bully in Britain has obviously outstripped supply, and influential figures and organisations must now conjure them up in an attempt to exaggerate their own victimhood.
While it would be easy to blame individual journalists themselves, the decline of standards across the board is the ultimate culprit.
The levelling of academic selection under both Tory and Labour administrations means access to a decent education is now a matter of parental income, and the rigour of our laughably-inflated qualifications collapsed long ago. Many professions have consequently become semi-hereditary affairs in which nepotism, wealth, or diversity quotas, not meritocracy, are the order of the day.
In such an order, where one cannot reasonably expect cultural memory to extend beyond the last fortnight, is it any surprise that this is the elite we have been saddled with?
It is not always fun to be disagreed with or proven wrong, especially if you have the ego of the average London scribbler. However, there is something altogether sinister about those who resort to virtual temper tantrums rather than correct an error (let alone admit the fact that they are not very good at their job) or even just accept that they can be criticised in good faith.
Alas, this is not enough for our new moral vanguard, for whom everything must chime with current political fashions, no matter how shallow or socially contingent. Heaven forbid one might stick their neck out for such fusty old anachronisms as truth, justice, or principle, if that means disagreeing with our new pantheon of public standard-bearers.