It is almost impossible to surprise me anymore when it comes to the depravity of the MSM.

Almost. Every once in a while the utter indifference to integrity is shocking enough to leave even me stunned.

When I read that the BBC’s chief “disinformation” reporter is known to have and even acknowledged that she lied on her CV (basically her resume) I was shocked. Not that she was a liar–that is almost a job requirement these days in the MSM–but that she was caught lying and faced no consequences.

🔴The BBC’s disinformation correspondent is facing accusations that she has previously embellished some experience on her CV https://t.co/ikFN9wz8HA

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) September 8, 2023

The lede from The Telegraph is far too kind. She hasn’t just been “accused” of lying. She has admitted it–unless that is, yet another reporter who has the emails faked them, which seems rather unlikely.

She reportedly applied to Coda Story saying that she had worked alongside Sarah Rainsford, a BBC foreign correspondent, for the broadcaster’s coverage of the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Natalia Antelava, Coda Story’s editor-in-chief, checked the claim and discovered that the young journalist had only met Ms Rainsford in a few social situations, rather than having worked with her.

Ms Spring was then reported to have then sent an apology email to the editor, citing her own “awful misjudgement” and assuring her that she was “a brilliant reporter”.

“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,” she emailed.

In a response also seen by The New European, Ms Antelava responded: “Telling me you are a brilliant reporter who exercises integrity and honesty when you have literally demonstrated the opposite was a terrible idea … I am sure if you use this as a lesson, things will work out.”

It is, I suppose, just possible that the Editor of Coda Story and a reporter at The New European are both lying, but Occam’s Razor suggests that the much easier-to-believe assertion that Marianna Spring lied on her CV. Given the UK’s defamation laws and the relative sizes of the BBC, which has enormous resources to burn, and these small publications it would be extremely risky for them to defame the BBC’s defamation reporter.

The BBC isn’t commenting…yet.

Spring, who is 27, isn’t some obscure reporter. She is in fact the BBC’s most criticized one and the BBC has not only stood by her up until now but promoted her quickly, and she gets accolades from her peers.

Since joining the BBC four years ago, Ms Spring has presented Panorama documentaries, made four podcast series and appeared in Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list in 2021.

In March, she was part of a Newsnight team that won a Royal Television Society award and her first book, titled Among the Trolls, is set to come out next year.

She was promoted to her disinformation and social media correspondent title in August last year and has her own BBC podcast called Marianna in Conspiracyland, which has been played almost 1.5 million times.

Spring is, in other words, held out as an exemplar of integrity and is a chief debunker of supposedly false claims. She fights misinformation, right?

Yeah, well, whatever. She had to break some eggs to make that omelet.

Should Spring be forever banned from employment for having made a stupid mistake in her early 20s? Of course not, although a journalist known to have lied should at the very least be subject to greater scrutiny rather than being promoted at a breakneck pace–achieving high status at one of the most prominent news organizations in the world in less than 4 years. Few people repent and reform when their lies are constantly rewarded, not punished.

Generally speaking, I would have expected that Spring would have been guided to another profession where lying is less of an issue, or at the very least have been relegated to something a bit less sensitive than rooting out “disinformation.” Maybe obituaries, where embellishment would be expected at least a little bit.

The BBC is likely conducting an internal investigation into the allegations, and if, as seems likely, they prove to be true, will apologize for getting it wrong in hiring her. At least we can hope for the latter.

But that brings up the obvious issue: an organization that purports to be in a position to determine what is real and what is misinformation clearly is incompetent at doing that very thing. They didn’t check. They claim that they fact-check disinformation and their fact-checker is apparently a liar.

We’ll have to wait and see what the BBC says about this. I wonder if they will assign the story to Spring.