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This is a global player original podcast. If you want to understand the controversy over the daily

telegraph columnist Alison Pearson's visit from the police, check out a few of these headlines.

It's been called Kafkaesque. It's been called utter tosh. It's been called a witch hunt.

It's been called an ordeal. It's been called a waste of police time. Is there anything more to this?

Weighing into this has been Boris Johnson in defence of Pearson,

Kemi Badenock, the opposition leader. Even Elon Musk from California or Mar-a-Lago has weighed in.

But it looks like the truth around this case is more complicated. And that's what we want to explore now. Welcome to the newsagents.

It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And on Remembrance Sunday, Alison Pearson was visited by the police.

She cried foul. The Daily Telegraph, for whom she writes, put it on the front page

the next day. And since when it has been a core celeb for the right to get agitated to say

free speech is being curtailed and police time is being wasted and what is happening to our woke

society yeah I think this is really really important to be clear about exactly what's

happened because you wouldn't know it and you wouldn't understand the nuance from it

from some of the more well extremely fevered reaction to it as you were saying John

so this is what happened.

So John said Alison Pearson was visited by two police officers at her home in Essex on Remembrance Sunday by Essex police.

She said she'd been accused of a non-crime hate incidents relating to a tweet that she had sent some time before.

She said that officers asked her to submit to a voluntary interview under caution,

but then refused to give her details about the allegedly offensive tweet,

which as I say has since been deleted.

Someone has complained about it.

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