How To Ruin Someone's Life For No Good Reason
The following conversation may or may not have taken place this week. It was between Sam Smith, a journalist on the Billericay Gazette, and Nev Wilson, his editor. It went like this.
Sam: “Hey Nev, I’ve been tweeted by a teacher at the Billericay School.”
Nev: “Oh, that’s nice. Let’s see what she says in her twitter feed.”
“Look, she uses an unusual phrase here: ‘blow job’. I wonder what that means?”
“Why not have a look at the context in which she used it?”
“No, I’ve got a better idea – I’ll Google it. Here we go...”
“Oh, my.”
“Goodness gracious me, Nev. Do people actually do that to one another?”
“Well if they do, I certainly had no idea about it. Until that awful teacher mentioned it!”
“She’s corrupting people’s minds! We must stop her!”
“Kill her! Burn the witch! Kill her!”
“KILL HER!”
Alright, the conversation never happened. We know it didn’t, because the teacher, Charlotte Berry, known to her 500-odd Twitter followers as @talktoteens, did not contact the journalist on Twitter. Rather, he contacted her.
It wasn’t hard: The Billericay Gazette know all about her many activities with the school. Because Charlotte Berry isn’t just any teacher. She’s a wellspring of energy, commitment and ideas, the sort of teacher you dream your kids will end up with. She runs a role model project for teenage girls, enabling them to meet inspiring professional women. She started a Historypin project in the school, bringing younger and older people together to share stories of their lives in the area. Even her Twitter name, @talktoteens, tells you something about her: she’s an advocate of communicating with kids, engaging them, not writing them off. How many people do you follow on Twitter whose username contains a good idea?
The Billericay Gazette knew all of this. They knew it because they had covered all of Charlotte’s activities with the school. Charlotte, and the school of which she is assistant head, have given them plenty of good stories over the 12 years she’s taught there. In fact, they illustrated the story they ran about her this week with a photo they took when she and three other teachers ran the London Marathon, raising £10,000 for the NSPCC.
But this week’s story was very different. Here’s the link:
It was a classic stitch-up, what the tabloids call ‘monstering’ someone. They often do it to celebrities, because they think they’re a bit up themselves, or because they’re a ‘public figure’ who might have done something naughty, like take drugs or go swimming without their top on. Basically, because they sell papers.
In Billericay, they do it to teachers.
I know what’s going on here, you think. Like a lot of people, they simply don’t understand Twitter. They think if you tweet something to one of your followers, it is instantly beamed into the minds of everyone in a 500-mile radius, forcing them to read your words, which are usually about what you had for breakfast.
Not true. The Billericay Gazette is part of Northcliffe Media South East, who know all about how Twitter works:
http://bgbrentwoodtweetup.nmgl.co.uk/it-started-with-a-tweet
The reporter, his editor and the editorial director of Northcliffe South East are all on Twitter and use it regularly. They knew that Charlotte’s tweets were written to individual followers, and wouldn’t be seen by anyone else unless they were following both (although when they ran them in their paper, they removed the ‘@’ names so they look like general tweets, entirely without context).
They knew the ‘inappropriate language’ was jokey banter, between grown-ups, entirely unconnected to the school. They knew that’s what people do on Twitter, they joke and swear and let their hair down. Like this tweet from 17 August, after a football match: “Best moment from last night, the dear old lady 3 rows behind...'bowyer you dirty c@#*!” (in case you’re not sure what c@#* means, it’s ‘cunt’). That tweet wasn’t by @talktoteens, by the way. It was by @SamSmith68, the journalist on the Billericay Gazette.
They also knew, of course, that by publishing Charlotte’s tweets in their paper, they would be bringing them to the attention of a far wider audience. Some of whom might quite enjoy being shocked and outraged that a teacher – a teacher, in a comprehensive school in England – might know words like ‘slut’ and ‘blow job’.
They were right. Check the comments section below the article if you want to know what kind of a monster Charlotte really is, because their readers are happy to share their knowledge and understanding of the matter.
There are two other things the Billericay Gazette probably knew, too. One is that the story would very likely be picked up by the national press, and even the half-hearted attempts at balance in the original article would be crushed out of existence. Spot on: Charlotte’s story has appeared in the Daily Mail, the Mirror and the Telegraph. Even Richard Littlejohn shares his considerable wisdom on the topic today (“When will these people ever grow up?”).
Charlotte Berry is a grown-up. She realises it was probably a mistake to openly identify herself as an assistant head on her Twitter account (but she was not tweeting in her official capacity and it was not a school account) and her biggest worry is that the reputation of the school has been damaged – a school she loves and has given years to. But now she can’t leave her house. She’s scared of being photographed, doorstepped, monstered further. She’s worried she’ll lose her job, worried she won’t be able to go back to running the projects she’s so proud of. She’s worried about the effect on her family.
And that’s the other thing that the noble pursuers of truth at the Billericay Gazette knew: that when they ran this absolute non-story – when they pruriently took a few well-known swear words out of context, wrapped them in insinuation and outright lies, and brought them to the attention of the easily-shocked up and down the country – they would be ruining someone’s life. Someone who’s not just blameless, but a brilliant example of what a teacher should be.
I don’t know Charlotte. But I did know @talktoteens, through Twitter. When she vanished, I wondered what had happened, and asked one or two people. Friends of hers got in touch, and eventually I found out all of this.
So she swore a few times. Big fucking deal.
[The @talktoteens Twitter account has been closed, understandably, but if you want to send messages of support on Twitter, please use the hashtag #talktoteens and we’ll try to make sure Charlotte sees them.]
