Deconstructing Marianna in Conspiracyland – Introduction

Iain Davis

The BBC’s “Marianna in Conspiracyland” podcast series is presented by Marianna Spring, the BBC’s specialist disinformation and social media correspondent. Over the course of 10 podcast episodes, mixing fact with fiction and exploiting applied psychology, “Conspiracyland” is a disinformation and propaganda campaign designed to mislead the BBC audience into accepting dictatorship.

It is part of a much larger global operation which seeks to install a global governance regime. For any readers new to my work, this may sound like a pretty wacky “conspiracy theory.” Sadly, it isn’t and over the next few articles we will explore the evidence that proves the existence of precisely this global “conspiracy.” All I’ll say for now is that this “conspiracy” is not a “secret.”

Over the next few posts, by deconstructing the BBC’s Conspiracyland and Verify disinformation, we will reveal the BBC’s motivations for spreading falsehoods and engaging in “conspiracy theory” propaganda. We will also examine the wider context within which it occurs.

The next post, Part 1 of the series, is currently exclusively available to my paid Substack subscribers. However, there is no need to become a paid subscriber to read it. Preceding posts will be made freely available to all as and when each subsequent post in the series is published.

I am trying to earn a living as a journalist and writer. This is not something that Marianna Spring approves of. In her politically motivated attack on researcher, film maker, author and journalist Richard D. Hall, Marianna said:

Mr Hall is only making a living from his theories, rather than making huge profits – why keep going?

Marianna earns somewhere in the region of £70K – £84K per annum as a BBC correspondent. The journalists, writers and content creators she attacks aren’t salaried and ‘make a living’ purely from the kind support of people who are interested in and value their work.

They don’t earn anything like Marianna’s salary. Marianna is at a loss to understand why they keep going and is determined to assist government efforts to make sure they don’t.

The BBC welcomes the fact that its journalism is directly funded by the government, especially the work of its foreign correspondents and its overseas media operations in countries like Ukraine. British people, who wish to pay for their propaganda, currently fork-out £159 annually for BBC disinformation.

For many, this isn’t perceived as a choice because they can’t watch broadcast television without it. With steep fines payable for failure to pay your TV license, the government uses threats and menaces to coerce the public to fund the BBC.

A rapidly increasing number of people have realised that they don’t need to pay anything. Contrary to government propaganda, it is a choice.

Faced with the prospect of no one bothering to pay for their propagandists, so wedded is the government to ensuring that its BBC “programming” continues that it has frozen the current license fee for two years, in the hope of enticing people to stay, while it desperately tries to figure out how it is going to fund its State media operation.

Currently the proposed government solution looks likely to be a direct tax:

Our evidence was clear that some form of public funding for the BBC remains necessary. [. . .] A universal household levy linked to council tax bills is one option which could take greater account of people’s ability to pay. A ring-fenced income tax is another.

As the effectiveness of its threats and menaces wanes, it is clearly essential, from the government’s perspective, that all choice be removed. Taxation at source has the added advantage of stealing money from people who can’t abide the BBC and wouldn’t choose to support it if you paid them.

For the 2020/21 financial year the BBC claims that it received £3.8 billion in license fees and more than £1.5 billion in other income—direct government funding, etc.—giving it an annual budget of more than £5.3 billion. It also operates its own “charity,” called BBC Media Action, which spreads BBC propaganda and disinformation globally.

BBC Media Action was supported in 2022 with “charitable—tax deductible—donations” from, among others, USAID (the CIA), The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth office—by far its biggest donor—the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN).

Unsurprisingly, the BBC license fee is currently set by the UK government. Nearly 30% of the BBC’s operational costs are directly funded by the UK government and its “charitable” operations are exclusively funded by a global public-private partnership between the UK government, other governments, global philanthropic foundations, intelligence agencies and supranational intergovernmental organisations.

Ofcom, the organisation that regulates the BBC, which itself is “directly accountable” to the UK government, refers to the BBC as a Public Service Broadcater (PSB) and denies that the BBC is a state broadcaster. According to Ofcom, a PSB delivers “impartial and trusted news.”

The generally accepted definition of state broadcasters is:

… media outlets that are under financial and/or editorial control of the state or government.

On 23rd March 2020, less than two weeks after the WHO declared their global pandemic, Ofcom published their official Coranovirus Guidance, to regulated broadcaster, such as the BBC:

We strongly advise you to take particular care when broadcasting [. . .] statements that seek to question or undermine the advice of public health bodies on the Coronavirus, or otherwise undermine people’s trust in the advice of mainstream sources of information about the disease [. . .] Such views should always be placed into context and not be presented in such a way as to risk undermining viewers’ trust in official health advice [. . .] Ofcom will consider any breach arising from harmful Coronavirus-related programming to be potentially serious and will consider taking appropriate regulatory action, which could include the imposition of a statutory sanction.

BBC’s reporting on the pseudopandemic was entirely controlled by the government via the government’s so-called “independent” regulator. The BBC only reported “official” government approved information. But the BBC went much further than most mainstream media (MSM) outlets.

In December 2020 Marianna Spring reported on BBC “Newsround,” the BBC’s current affairs program for younger viewers. Spring told the BBC’s child audience:

Big communities of anti-vaxxers, those who are against vaccines, have spent years spreading untrue conspiracies. [. . .] There is a big difference between real worries about vaccines [. . .] and these conspiracies which suggest that vaccines are a way of deliberately hurting or causing harm to people. [. . .] Social media sites and the government have committed to do more to tackle lies about the coronavirus vaccine online. [. . .] some say they have not done enough to label or remove topics on this subject.

Marianna did not think it necessary to tell British children that she was compelled only to report government approved messaging. She told the children to trust information from the government and its pharmaceutical corporation “partners” and to reject all opinions expressed from any other source.

She deliberately conflated concerns about jab safety and efficacy with suspicions about a possible nefarious agenda, misleading children into thinking that the people she labelled anti-vaxxers, who had continually highlighted jab safety risks and dubious efficacy, were spreading “conspiracies” that were “lies.” Marianna, like most of her BBC colleagues, was inducing children to take experimental jabs that they did not need.

Perhaps most concerning was Marianna’s willingness to normalise state censorship for children. Contrary to every democratic principle known to their parents, she suggested to the youngest generation that the government should “remove” information it doesn’t “approve.” Thus, Marianna was advocating dictatorship, as a preferred model of government, to British children.

There is no doubt that the centralised control of information is favoured by autocracies and other types of dictatorships. It goes without saying that dictatorships are, by definition, anti-democratic.

When German political scientists explored How Dictators Control the Internet, they found:

A growing body of research has studied how autocratic regimes interfere with internet communication to contain challenges to their rule. [. . .] In most autocratic regimes, governmental interference in digital infrastructure and communication is commonplace. [. . .] This influence occurs for political motives—to ban opposition activists from mobilizing their followers online, to contain the spread of information that is critical of the regime, or to spy on the population to identify potential dissenters. [. . .] [A]utocrats make systematic use of digital tools and interfere with online communication to contain challenges to their rule.

This is precisely the information control system that Marianna was promoting among children. Marianna Spring wholeheartedly endorses dictatorships and is vocally opposed to democratic ideals.

The BBC is funded entirely at the discretion of the UK government, it receives a significant proportion of its income directly from the government, it is regulated by an organisation that is bound by law to report to the government and which functions, via legislation, at the behest of the government.

Yet, despite all of this, in its mission statement, the BBC says of itself:

Trust is the foundation of the BBC. We’re independent, impartial and honest.

This is a deceptive statement intended to mislead. The BBC is not remotely “independent” from government. It is not impartial, but is rather directed by the government to report only “official” narratives. By any reasonable definition, it is quite obviously a state broadcaster.

Therefore, the BBC’s own mission statement is disinformation. In no way can it be considered “honest” and only the most naive would “trust” it.

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of “trust” is:

Firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something. [. . .] Acceptance of the truth of a statement without evidence or investigation.

Any news media organisation that insists that you trust it does not wish you to engage in critical thinking. It requires that you believe whatever it tells you “without evidence or investigation.”

The demand for “trust” has no place in a pluralistic, free media in a democracy. Our ability to question power, and not to trust it, is the most basic of democratic ideals.

Over the next few posts, we are going to review each episode of “Marianna in Conspiracyland” and, having downloaded and listened to all of it—using this handy online service—we’ll highlight the absurd propaganda and disinformation strewn throughout. But before we do, I just wanted to make a couple of points.

Marianna Spring has every right to her opinion, both as a reporter and as a human being. Of course she features heavily in my criticisms, but this is only because she is the chosen face of the Conspiracyland series and the BBC’s Verify campaign. I hold no personal animosity towards her.

Unlike Marianna and the BBC, I do not believe that anyone should be censored or personally attacked for expressing their honestly held opinion, including Spring herself. If she has been attacked or abused online, that is not something I support.

Her opinions are the antithesis of my own. I believe she is spreading dangerous disinformation that seeks to censor freedom of speech and expression and, thereby, end human freedom and promote enslavement of the population. I find Marianna Spring’s authoritarian, anti-democratic opinion, advocating dictatorship as she does, offensive.

That being said, I have no right not to be offended and both Spring, and the BBC, have every right to offend. Causing offence is one of the costs of free speech: a democratic ideal most people consider important.

I am also not clear as to the degree of Spring’s personal complicity. To what degree she has considered the appalling ramifications of what she promoting is unknown to me. I can only conclude that she is either a willing propagandist, who welcomes political dictatorship, or is unwittingly or wittingly spreading BBC propaganda and disinformation, simply to further her own career, without caring about the consequences.

I’m not sure which is worse.

You can read more of Iain’s work at his blog IainDavis.com (Formerly InThisTogether) or on UK Column or follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his SubStack. His new book Pseudopandemic, is now available, in both in kindle and paperback, from Amazon and other sellers. Or you can claim a free copy by subscribing to his newsletter.