On July 29, a knife-wielding assailant went on a stabbing rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England. Three young girls — ages 6, 7 and 9 — were killed and 10 others, including children, were wounded.
The next day, Megan Specia, a New York Times reporter who covers Britain and Ireland, traveled from London to Southport, where she found a community in mourning.
“Everyone I was speaking with was really rattled,” she said. “This happened in a residential area in a pretty quiet town. There was a real sense of ‘How did this happen here?’”
Misinformation rapidly propagated on social media and messaging apps, which claimed that the person who carried out the attack was a Muslim asylum seeker who had recently arrived in the United Kingdom. A false name even circulated briefly. In reality, the suspect was a 17-year-old who was born in Cardiff, Wales. The police have not disclosed a motive.
Still, the misinformation had done damage: After a vigil for the victims on July 30, anti-immigrant rioters in Southport destroyed property and set fire to police cars. Almost 40 officers were injured. Anti-immigrant sentiment reached a boiling point over the weekend, stoking violent protests in more than a dozen towns and cities across the United Kingdom. A heavy police presence and large crowds of counterprotesters met them in response.
And on Wednesday, thousands of extra police officers mobilized across the country amid fears of further riots. Instead, thousands of antiracism protesters gathered again. Only a few arrests were made. But the country remains on alert.
In a phone interview on Wednesday, just before she boarded a train to Liverpool to report on the planned demonstrations there, Ms. Specia spoke about the role that misinformation has played in reporting this sprawling story and the challenges and potential dangers that come with the job. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Why has this tragedy, and the misinformation that accompanied it, led to such an extreme response?
The current climate in the U.K. is similar in some ways to the current climate elsewhere. We’ve seen in many places in the world — not just in Europe, we’ve seen this in the U.S. — the rise of populist, right-leaning conversation about immigration. The U.K. has become increasingly multiethnic post-World War II. In some ways, it’s been really successful in creating a society that has remained largely peaceful. Integration and cohesion have been a part of that story. At the same time, anti-immigration conversations have become more politically mainstream.
How do you approach reporting on such a wide-scale story?
It’s a really sensitive story. The fact that it’s happening in a geographically disparate area makes it difficult to be on the ground. We have a whole team of people who have been covering this since last week. But we can’t be in every place. We’re relying on official sources to understand what’s happening in a particular place at a particular time.
How has misinformation affected your reporting?
It definitely makes it more challenging. There are groups who monitor the far right and this type of disinformation on social media and messaging platforms. We’ve built up good contacts with those groups, and we rely on them as things unfold. We also have Times colleagues who are specialists in this type of misinformation and on these platforms. We’re trying to take the mind-set that we bring to our reporting and our fact-checking in the real world to this online world.
How do you ensure that misinformation isn’t incorporated into your coverage?
We’re verifying and taking a real skeptical eye to the information that’s been flying around on social media. When violence like this unfolds, oftentimes, you see videos and images on platforms where disinformation has been bubbling up, so you have to be diligent in reporting on them. We’re making lots of phone calls to people on the ground and working with the network of sources that we’ve built up over years of covering the U.K. I have good contacts among the charities and groups and nongovernmental organizations that have been supporting asylum seekers.
What other reporting challenges have you faced so far?
There are specific security concerns when you cover a demonstration that is most likely going to devolve into violence. I’ve previously had hostile-environment training. I’ve covered large-scale demonstrations and violent protests before, both in the U.S. and abroad. You always want to be very aware of the situations you’re finding yourself in when you’re engaging with groups out there bent on violence and disorder. Those people aren’t willing to have dialogue and conversation about their motivations because their motivation is to cause violence and criminal damage.
But so far, I’ve only experienced reporting in a community, Southport, that was very much in mourning. There was a real sense of solidarity with the people I was speaking with. It may be a different case as we continue to report on this story.
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