Richard Bacon opens up in a moving interview about Caroline Flack and online trolling

joining the studio now by Richard Bacon Radio and TV presenter Richard, it's great to have you back in the studio under sad circumstances. It came to mind very quickly when I heard the terrible news about Caroline Flack over the weekend because I know you know her. but you were also one of the first people I know who did some serious journalism about

trolling

what it is, who they are, what guys they are, what they do, what they did to you, yeah, take me back to that, that was a few years ago. I did it because we used to work together on the radio and I just replaced Simon Mail on a radio show and there was a troll who was threatening my life and not in any meaningful way but they were very aggressive messages than to lose one.

In my case, my son Arthur had just been born and he was threatening to kill him and things like that, so I tried to investigate it and made a documentary where I tried to track them down and then I talked to experts and it became Yes, it was before

trolling

was as prominent as it is now, Billy. I had never heard of it until you did it, so it must have been a little less than eight years ago, I guess, and it was like that. I learned a lot and believe. There's definitely something about a combination of access to an audience and anonymity when you put these things together that have a keyboard, an audience that generates a reaction from an audience and then people don't really know who you are, that those things together bring out of nature. human, that is. horrible and in some ways it was magnified by the process and I think when you said you saw it with Caroline too, there's an instinct in a lot of us and myself and to be honest, they're not just trolls, which is to make snap judgments very simplistic. about a situation that is actually very complex and that we know nothing about and often when we don't know the person at all, yeah, I think that really bothered me because of Caroline's case and people trolling her , but it was obviously so I say a lot of people were having these conversations, people, I know we were having these conversations, there was an element of when she was arrested and there was that incident involving her boyfriend, people were enjoying it and they were treating him like gossip and my first thought was partly having made that documentary, but also this may seem like a sigh, but I've been to AAA several times and if you go to AAA I can't guarantee you'll stop. drinking forever, but if there's one thing you learn from AAA it's because it's a process where people share stories.

When you hear a story like Caroline's, your first thought is, well, there's a vulnerable human being who needs help and stuff. That's how I think we should all react to those stories that, whether you knew her or not, and especially if you employed her, what you're dealing with is someone vulnerable who needs help, so while the starting point should be be one of concern and even if you can't empathize with the accusations, you can sympathize and and and keep in mind that they are accusations in number, whether they are accusations anyway, be careful that she is famous, be careful that the trolls will attack her and just keep in mind that it's fragile and and I think if we could, it's about empathy, isn't it in a way?

It's about stopping treating stories like they're fun, if we can stop judging and piling on things we don't really understand. I think if we stop and help vulnerable humans, we will all be in a better place. I remember in the early days of my career training course. One of the questions I asked one of the course teachers was why? news local news in particular obsessed with traffic accidents and said it's the jungle, I'm safe in the tree watching the traffic accident happen. I would like to know that the car accident has happened hasn't it, but when I hear it I feel safer because it hasn't happened to me and I wonder if there is some kind of version of that when we see famous people in particular in trouble we think ah for a moment I am the righteous one, I am better and also because they are famous, it is a strange relationship that now they have collapsed because they were famous and they had what you imagine is a kind of golden existence and now they have fallen on their faces and therefore , over there.

It's just an instinct to accumulate and definitely find it entertaining and like I say I never want to sound better than anyone else but I'm applying my experience, you're fine, of course, but I'm trying to apply my experience from that documentary, but also from having heard painful stories in places like hey and I, she was obviously vulnerable and I, I don't know what happened with ITV for example, I haven't the slightest idea what the response was, but yeah, I hope. I'm sure I understand why you'd suspend someone from TV, but I just hope they were offered help.

She may not have received help. I don't know enough about it, but I just hope they treat her well as a vulnerable person. they the ITV and Los Angeles statement speaks violently about her in very dear terms um so hopefully that's reflected in what they may have done everything correctly. I just don't have the information, but you do see some trying to say yes and To go back to your documentary about trolling, was there any? Because we're talking this hour about how we control what seems to be an uncontrollable beast. You already know the Internet,

online

social networks.

Were you looking for this person to be prosecuted? Did they threaten his son first? I went to the police and the police couldn't do anything about it because the person was using a server in Canada and that is often very difficult for the police that a troll can operate in our country but if they use a server from a different country , the police have no jurisdiction over that country and can't find the person, they just can't find them, so often people can't be traced, that's the reality in the case of that documentary. I think he or she got scared because I put it on TV, which was something I could do that other people can't do, but with trolling it's hard to track them down, what I hope we can do is maybe just address human nature. a little more and I do what I already said.

I think all of these things should be lessons in empathy. Just stop and reflect on the impact of these stories, the impact of gossiping and talking about someone and just remember that you. I often don't know what people are going through inside. To be honest, I would say that almost every adult in the world has some kind of internal turmoil that they do not share with you and these situations tend to be very very complex and when someone gets into trouble, all we have to do is help them and when you return to your problems all those years ago briefly on Blue Peter, that was before social media right?

Oh yeah, that was pretty bad, I guess. even before social media came along, but it's a different world now, isn't it much worse than it would have been here? I guess I won't tell you and I was falsely fired when we weren't so I found it very heartbreaking. actually well, it's because it's also about what's difficult, I think it's when facts are reported about you that you know aren't true and it's very difficult to correct them, isn't it? Yes, and you have to be tough in the face. of those and when that happened to me for the first and only time that it really happened to me in a significant way, I was resilient in the sense that I still knew how to defend myself, but I felt devastated by it, yeah, and and, and I think you know and Yeah. you really take that as an example, it's relatively, it was a tiny thing compared to Caroline and a lot of other stories and yeah, and yet you know from that experience how devastating it was and you actually imagine that that was magnified and had power, yeah .

Yes, to millions and to someone who was already vulnerable. I know this is a petition that is going around and that they are trying. I think Caroline's Law, yes, is for the government to conduct an investigation into how public figures are reported, and I think that's probably a good idea. I would probably assume that celebrities in general are either rich and have a very nice life, but there's something about putting yourself out there that makes you vulnerable and I think that wouldn't be a bad idea. I don't know what the answer is, but I think about it, yeah, I don't think celebrities should have kids.

Homosexual thoughts. I don't think celebrities should have special protection, for example, if they've broken the law and it's in public. Be careful and I got to work, you know that something is going to be difficult around the edges, some will be up and down reporting, but some will not be like that, yes, but it is the degree to which that second part reporting more brutally is manageable or No. I suspect it's not, maybe it's not, but I think brutal is a good word, it's just that some of the reporting would have been fair, reasonable and inappropriate when it was a public story. nothing wrong with reporting the story it's just a matter of and it's pretty much the harbinger of the public it's trolling it's social media actually this case involves the cps but it's are we being too brutal to people when the most vulnerable, I think that's the question and I think some of the reporting would have been fine and some of it would have gone too far and just been tailored to stop and reflect on how we pause and reflect on how we talk about these people right now, won't be a bad thing, especially when you're away from celebrities and the spotlight, you know you have young children, you know kids in schools are being bullied mercilessly on social media at times, especially as they get older.

Maybe it's as valid a conversation in that area as it is in that of celebrities, right? I think it all comes back to empathy. I think I think I think it's just that that word is the heart of all these discussions. One thing I learned from that documentary is that bullying in our home follows the kids at home, so if you get bullied at school, you go to your room, turn on Facebook and the bullying continues before computers and social media, They only harass you. after the harassment has just happened, it's good to read that someone closes the door and goes home and now they can't and I think on every level, if we're talking about trolling, if we're talking about CPS, if we're talking about report, yes We're talking about bullying following kids home in some ways, it's about empathy and in some ways it's about understanding that occasionally we need to take a moment and pause and reflect and think about people as beings. vulnerable humans going through inner turmoil and just making sure we don't make things unnecessarily and unfairly and brutally worse a good word words is the right word