Why a BBC political reporter now needs a bodyguard
LONDON— Last week’s Labour Party conference, an annual gathering and one of the landmark events of the British political calendar, had an unexpected attendee: a bodyguard.
He was not there to protect Jeremy Corbyn, the party’s leftist leader, or any of the party’s grandees. Instead he guarded Laura Kuenssberg, the political editor of the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC).
As one of Britain’s leading political journalists, with a reputation for asking tough questions, and as a woman, Kuenssberg has long been the target of vitriolic abuse and threats of violence. But the sight of her being shadowed by a guard, and the realization that her employers must now deem those threats credible enough to warrant giving her protection, has shocked some members of the British commentariat.
“It is so profoundly depressing,” said Jenni Russell, a prominent columnist and former BBC editor who also attended the conference. “The graphic level of threats to women is quite extraordinary, and it’s one of the worst things to have happened in recent British public life.”
Multiple journalists have seen Kuenssberg with a guard this week, although she and the BBC both declined to comment, or to confirm or deny the news. Others spoke of how her experience was part of an international trend in which public discourse has become more venomous, and trust in mainstream journalists has eroded.
Her case has some parallels with the intimidation of journalists at rallies during U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign, in particular of Katy Tur, an NBC correspondent who was protected by a Secret Service agent as she left a rally in 2015 at which the future president had singled her out for criticism.
But Kuenssberg’s treatment has a specifically British context. Unlike in America, the threats of violence against her and other journalists have not followed rhetorical attacks by leading politicians — Corbyn himself condemned online abuse in a major speech Wednesday — but have instead come from members of the public.
Kuenssberg’s trolls are also as likely to come from the left as the right — as are other critics of her work. Her reporting, as well as that of many other BBC journalists, is the subject of constant critique on a wave of new left-wing websites, such as the Canary, Evolve Politics and Novara Media.
This is a new phenomenon, says Martin Moore, who heads the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power at King’s College London.
In recent decades, the BBC has been a frequent punching bag for right-wing politicians and commentators, who have portrayed it as a bastion of closet liberals. But Moore’s research into criticism of the BBC during the recent general election found that much “came from the left as well,” he said.
“The BBC was being attacked from both right and left — and that is a difference from the past,” Moore added.
This shift is related to Corbyn’s political ideology, which is more left-wing than that of his predecessors in the Labour Party leadership.
“I think that has left people thinking that the political culture at the BBC is one that is not sympathetic to new and emerging forms of politics and in fact is committed to sabotaging them,” said Ash Sarkar, a senior editor at Novara Media, one of the new crop of online left-wing outlets.
Commentators from all sides also cautioned against framing Kuenssberg’s treatment as solely a problem for the left.
Nor, Russell said, is it a problem that affects men and women equally. Men might get called names, she said. “Women get told, ‘I’m going to rape you.’ ”