The BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, said the abuse and threats she faced were meant to try to silence her, as she spoke out for the first time about the subject since she was assigned a bodyguard during the Labour party conference.
Kuenssberg has been subjected to hisses and boos at Labour and Ukip press conferences this year and received criticism from Conservative supporters, with the Daily Telegraph asking if she is the “most divisive woman on TV today”.
“I didn’t aspire to have the finger pointed at me,” she said at a Jewish Care event on Wednesday. “What they are trying to do is silence me.”
Kuenssberg, who was being interviewed by James Harding, the director of news and current affairs at the BBC, said she would not allow the abuse to have an impact on her job. “No matter how unpleasant and personal it might be, it is not as bad as what other journalists face around the world in much more difficult circumstances,” she said.
In comments first reported by the Jewish Chronicle, she also said that someone in Theresa May’s cabinet had joked about the government being “weak and stable” and that in “another time” the prime minister would have been forced out after the general election result.
In September, the chairman of the BBC called on politicians and social media companies to clamp down on the “explicit and aggressive” abuse suffered by BBC journalists.
Sir David Clementi said some of the abuse occurred in “plain sight” at press conferences. “Politicians cannot stand by and watch – they must confront any abuse, and make it clear that it is intolerable,” he said. “The journalists of the BBC, when abused simply for doing their job, should know they have the determined support of the board to stamp it out.”
He called for Facebook and Twitter to do more. “These days, there is much more abuse. It is increasingly explicit and aggressive, and much of it occurs online,” Clementi said. “I welcome the work the government is doing to tackle this, and I’m following closely the efforts of Twitter and Facebook, amongst others, to clamp down on the perpetrators. I hope the social media platforms do even more.”
