BBC Factcheckers Accused of Spreading Disinformation

Breitbart News reports that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has failed to respond to allegations of spreading fake news on its new disinformation division’s flagship podcast Marianna in Conspiracyland.

The claims concern alleged fake news spread by Disinformation and Social Media correspondent Marianna Spring about former UKIP MEP candidate and host of the Lotus Eaters podcast, Carl Benjamin.

In the very first installment of BBC Radio 4’s Marianna in Conspiracyland podcast, Spring falsely claimed that Benjamin’s YouTube channel Sargon of Akkad is currently suspended by the platform. Spring then claimed that Benjamin had traveled to the small town of Totnes as part of his campaign for the European Parliament in 2019 with former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who was not at the event in question.

The former UKIP candidate also denied allegations made by Spring that he had made “rape threats”, which as he noted on his podcast this week, is a criminal offense in England and would have resulted in criminal charges if police determined he had made such a threat.

Benjamin also refuted claims made by the BBC Verify correspondent of “engagement with white supremacists,” which she did not support with evidence.

In a statement provided to Breitbart London, Mr Benjamin said: “I’m rather shocked about all of this, to be honest. Not that the BBC would lie about me or anyone else, but about the scale and brazenness of the lie. Usually, they lie by omission, which allows them to use literal truths to tell an untrue story by excluding key facts which change the character of the tale…

“However, in this case, they have completely fabricated an event for which there is no evidence… The BBC has invented a boogeyman to sustain a fever dream narrative on a subject about which many reasonable people have many reasonable concerns. I think they’re doing this deliberately to invalidate these reasonable concerns by unfairly painting anyone who holds them as some kind of extremist. I don’t think that’s appropriate.”