Thursday 26 November 2020

Characters


Twitter folk will twitter. 

Ben Hunte, BBC: My family and I have been sent racist and homophobic abuse following the below screenshot of me being posted. I am fine - but I will let the police take over. If you disagree with my job, or with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines, or with wider LGBT-related decisions I am not involved in, please do not contact my family with hate. Please use the BBC’s complaints process. I am doing my job to the best of my abilities. I am proud of being a journalist and so grateful to those who share their experiences with me. Thank you ♥.

Laurence Fox, actor: Hey Ben, saddened to hear you have had abuse. It’s horrible and I know exactly how you feel. My view is that the BBC is increasingly identitarian and divisive and should be defunded. I believe in people, not acronyms. Loz x #DefundTheBBC

John Simpson, BBC: Deeply depressing that my excellent colleague, the BBC’s LGBT correspondent Ben Hunte, should have received racist and homophobic abuse in the wake of an unpleasant tweet by Laurence Fox which talked about 'defunding' the BBC. Fox should know better.

Laurence Fox: Hey John. Nice to meet you. Do you believe the BBC should have a dedicated LGBTQ correspondent? Where do you stand on safe spaces for biological females? Do you have a position on trans children? Really interested to have a discussion. 

Adrian Hilton, academic: Deeply distressing that [another] Laurence Fox should be on the end of abuse, reproof and damnation in the wake of this mistaken tweet by John Simpson News, which presumably was meant to target [actor] Laurence Fox. Simpson should be more careful.  

John Simpson Apologies to the Laurence Fox I tagged — turns out he wasn’t the character whose anti-BBC tweet stirred up various homophobic & racist types to abuse my colleague Ben Hunte. The mistake is mine, but the offence lies elsewhere.

John Simpson: [to the correct Laurence Fox this time]  I think you’d do better to express your regret that a tweet of yours should have led people who support you to abuse my colleague.

Maybe Tim Davie should just tell them to get off Twitter, and enforce that call?

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