Death by Conspiracy?: 5. Reflections in the Glass

0:00Right, so this is BBC Radio Shropshire. It's a single-storey building that used to be a supermarket in the middle of a housing estate in North Shrewsbury. Jim Hawkins is a radio presenter. And then if you come through here, you have the newsroom and office. I want to talk to Jim because this building became the unlikely setting for a dramatic encounter after the death of Gary Matthews. I've been in Shrewsbury investigating what happened to Gary, who was pulled into the world of conspiracy theories and then, in January 2021, caught Covid and died. And then if you come through this other mercifully latched door...

0:42That same January, Jim had a guest on his show. It was a member of Gary's family. But as the interview went out on the Shropshire airwaves, there was a bit of a commotion brewing outside the front of Jim's workplace. And out here, in the wet and the rain, this is quite a visible presence. You know, we've got the logo here, people know we are here, so if people want to come and see us, it's a bit of a landmark. So while I was playing out the interview in that studio, just a matter of feet away, there were people out here upset about the fact that I was doing that. And who were those people? Those people were the Covid Resistance Network.

1:27The Shropshire Corona Resilience Network, that's the Facebook group that Gary was in before he died. We've covered them in previous episodes, as we've been looking into Gary's life and the conspiracy underground in Shrewsbury. But how did the story of what happened to Gary begin to spread into the mainstream after his death? And how would one member of Gary's family be pulled into an encounter with the same conspiratorial world? I'm Marianna Spring from BBC Radio 4. This is Death by Conspiracy. Episode 5, Reflections in the Glass. Before we get to the commotion, let's rewind a little. I meet Jim in his radio studio first thing on a Tuesday morning, around half an hour before he goes on air.

2:17Through the glass behind us, two radio producers watch on. Please say hello to Tim and Maisie. Hello. Hello. Hi. If Jim is feeling at all ruffled as time ticks down towards his presenting shift, he doesn't show it. But what did shock him a year ago was discovering the darker side of the picturesque town he calls home. The first we knew about it was the coverage of the fact that Gary had been a Covid denier and then subsequently died. And it was a real shock to discover that something like that had happened that really did knock everybody sideways. So Jim and his colleagues began looking for someone who could speak about what had happened.

2:57And that's when they found one of Gary's cousins. When Gary passed away, we were looking at comments and responses on social media and it was obvious that Tristan was a close connection to Gary who had something that he wanted to say. We wondered if he'd be up for saying it to us. we made a tentative approach and he said yes he would. What did he want to say to you? He wanted to say how sorry he was that he didn't make a phone call that he always intended to make to Gary. And so a fortnight after Gary's death on the 28th of January 2021 Jim's interview with Tristan began to filter out of kitchen radios and car speakers across Shropshire.

3:51I've known Gary my whole life. He's my older cousin. I remember he used to babysit me. When I was about 10 or 12, he played me the movie Alien, which is now my favourite movie. I've been for years. He introduced me to Talking Heads. I'm really into Talking Heads. So quite an influential figure in your life, really, in one way or another. Yeah, I've never really realised how much he really did influence me. Reflecting on it now, Jim says it was important just to let Tristan speak. I was quite in the moment when I was doing it, really, because this is the death of somebody and this is the voice of someone who was close to that person and bringing it down to that so the power comes from him, really.

4:44He was into a lot of conspiracy theories, especially online. He was into them before the pandemic broke out. But when the pandemic broke out, I've been told he was involved with the Shropshire Corona Resilience Network. I think he was spurned on by that group. And it actually upset me a lot. I saw a post of his in April and I sort of begged him to wear a mask because I knew the consequences of not doing that. What did he say to that? It became an online argument. I feel a lot of guilt for that being our last communication. And I wish I'd reached out beforehand. And as Tristan describes Gary getting COVID in January, he begins to fill in some of the critical gaps around Gary's final days.

5:34He had symptoms for a week. His family would speak to him on the phone and encourage him to go and get a test. It took him a long time to get tested. and when he did get tested he uh even though he had like shallow breathing and uh had uh quite a bad cough he walked to the testing center to get that diagnosis but i do wish he'd uh he could have gone earlier he walked home from the test center and he started isolating and uh when his father couldn't couldn't get through to him on the phone he went around to his apartment and had the landlord let him in and found him reaching for a phone. And unfortunately, his dad had to go through that too.

6:25Yeah, I think he was reaching out for an ambulance, but never got there. And as Tristan's words spread across the airwaves, messages of support were pouring in. But outside the building, something else was going on. We're sitting in the studio in question right now, OK? And opposite me is a big glass window with three layers of glass at different angles. Reception is behind me. So I'm usually mostly unaware of what's going on in reception. But if I see a lot of activity in the reflections on that, I know there's something happening. And usually there's not much. Usually all I can see through there is the production team, Tim and Maisie.

7:12And there were reflections of activity in the reception. So you just kind of peek around and, oh look, there are people who are unhappy at the programme I'm doing. They said they were from the Shropshire Corona Resilience Network. Among them was a familiar face. They were saying that we were only presenting one side of the story. They were demanding a right of reply. I believe one of them was Charlie Parker. The small group managed to get into the reception. The assistant editor here went to the front door, had a conversation with them. They came in and tried to get a bit further in. And yet there was a surprise in store.

7:52If the intention was to disrupt the broadcast, then they were about to be disappointed. Because even though Tristan's voice was playing out on the radio, he wasn't actually there. The interview had been pre-recorded. And Tristan was in Los Angeles, where he lives. The idea that I was sitting there in this studio, playing out this pre-recorded interview, and there was someone about 15, 20 feet away, was really cross that I was doing that and that we were doing it. That wasn't hugely comfortable, yeah. That must have been quite scary, people turning up here. Yeah, yeah, it is. We're not like New Broadcasting House or Television Centre or something.

8:36we're a converted supermarket in the middle of a housing estate. It's not the sort of thing we're used to, really. But a few weeks after the encounter at the BBC, Charlie did manage to get his point of view across to an audience beyond his online group. It was in the local newspaper. My name's Mark Andrews. I'm a feature writer at the Shopshire Star. I met Mark in a pub by the River Severn. In early February 2021, Mark wrote a story based around Charlie Parker's version of events. From memory, he contacted us about wanting to put his point of view, which, as ever, we'll always listen to what anybody says and we'll do a fair report of what they say.

9:21And he said he was a very close friend and he believed that he was misrepresenting his views, that he was not an anti-vaxxer as such, that was what I remember him saying. and he felt it was diminishing to his memory. So that's all he member. Although the Shropshire Star did publish other articles about Gary Matthews that took in different perspectives, in this one, Charlie Parker is the only source quoted. The article talks about how the Facebook group wanted to, quote, share information so that people could make an informed decision about the risks surrounding Covid. But it's a Facebook group filled with disinformation about the virus.

10:01That point was made in another article in the Shropshire Star from just days after Gary died, but isn't in the story that Charlie's quoted in. Instead, it includes the claim from Charlie that Covid has been, quote, over-exaggerated to further a political agenda. Charlie also says that he does not accept that, quote, putting a piece of cloth over your face will stop you from getting it, or that it will protect anybody else. Concerns about restrictions are, of course, valid. But public health experts say that lockdowns have slowed the spread of the virus Masks do reduce transmission As soon as the article went to print It was being shared in the Shropshire Corona Resilience Network The challenge faced by the Shropshire Star Is one that media organisations up and down the country are also grappling with And that's that people with a conspiratorial tilt to their views on Covid and lockdowns Can shape how stories like this are covered In the topsy-turvy world of conspiracy theories, finding journalistic balance is difficult, as reporter Mark Andrews acknowledges.

11:07I think it's very, you have to be very careful who you speak to. I mean, obviously, if somebody does have a legitimate point, you know, a legitimate target to make, even if it's an eccentric one, we will report on that, but balance it by putting, you know, what the other positions are on that as well. There is something complicated to unpack here. Conspiracy thinking was more fringe before the pandemic. But now everyone seems to have a neighbour, a family member or a local unicyclist like Charlie who's been drawn into this way of thinking online. And that makes covering it even more difficult, especially when they desperately want to tell you their side of the story.

11:45It's something that comes up time and time again. Often these people are attention seekers and working out what attention to give them is a growing challenge when it comes to covering conspiracies. Because while still fringe, it's not just a few cranks, but an expanding political movement. One that pulls in legitimate criticism about everything from vaccine passports to lockdowns and that taps into a deeply felt anger and distrust at the government, the media and the measures we've all had to live through. Attempting to unpick fact from fiction, political manoeuvring from legitimate grievance, is tricky.

12:22How can we pinpoint who's responsible within that quagmire? It's something I ask BBC Radio's Shropshire presenter Jim Hawkins. Who does Tristan hold responsible, or who did he in that interview? I've listened back to it a few times, and I ask him a couple of questions about that. I think the people he holds most responsible, if anyone, to be fair, are the people that are propagating the COVID is a hoax thing. He thinks a lot of the responsibility for what happened to Gary comes down to Gary, but a lot of it also comes down to the people he was mixing with. He didn't want to point any fingers, but if he was going to, I think it was going to be those people.

13:05Charlie and Tristan didn't come face to face. After all, despite having grown up in Shrewsbury, Tristan was thousands of miles away in Los Angeles. But that was about to change. Because a few months after the interview with Jim at Radio Shropshire, Tristan boarded a plane. I'm Marianna Spring, and that was episode five of Death by Conspiracy from BBC Radio 4. Next time, Charlie and Tristan meet. I've lost my cousin. Yeah, I appreciate that, and a lot of us... A lot of this, I don't think you've ever believed it. This kills people.