Sarah Smith, the BBC’s former Scotland editor, has said she feels relieved to have left the country after enduring years of misogynistic “bile and hatred” while covering Scottish politics.
Smith, the recently appointed North America editor for BBC News, said she repeatedly experienced gendered abuse while doing her job, which led her to significantly reduce her use of Twitter and to fear she had become a visible target.
Born and educated in Edinburgh, she said she believed much of the abuse came from nationalists because her father was John Smith, the UK Labour party leader who died in 1994. He was a notable critic of Scottish independence.
In remarks published by the Reuters Institute, Smith said: “He was a very well known politician, he was a unionist, people like to therefore assume that my politics must be the same as my father’s, despite me being, one, a different person, and him having been dead for 27 years.” » | Severin Carrell, Scotland editor | Thursday, February 17, 2022
