- A gunman killed at least two people in Auckland, New Zealand hours before the women’s football World Cup kicked off.
- Protesters set fire to the Swedish embassy in Baghdad ahead of another planned Koran burning in Sweden.
- England cricketer Stuart Broad became only the second pace bowler to take 600 wickets in the 146-year history of Test matches.
Dan Wootton, the broadcaster and show-business journalist, is facing allegations that he offered colleagues tens of thousands of pounds in return for sexual material.
An investigation by the independent outlet Byline Times, subsequently covered by The Guardian and the BBC among others, claims he posed as a fictitious celebrity agent called Martin Branning to offer sums of up to £30,000 to individuals.
Tortoise has not been able to verify these claims independently, but they are now being investigated by the publishers behind The Sun and MailOnline – respectively Wootton’s former and current employers. Byline Times said it had handed a dossier to the Met Police.
So what? For weeks, outlets including The Sun, MailOnline and GB News have led on stories alleging misconduct by some of the UK’s most prominent television presenters. Now, the spotlight has shifted to these organisations themselves.
Schofield. A little under two months ago, Wootton demanded answers from ITV boss Carolyn McCall over the row engulfing Phillip Schofield and his relationship with a much younger man.
In his regular MailOnline column, filled with references to his interview with fellow GB News presenter Eamonn Holmes, Wootton called for: “The truth, this time; not the saccharin fairytale Schofield offered up on the sofa to an unsuspecting British public.”
Edwards. By his own account, Wootton “didn’t say a word about Huw Edwards. Not one word.” In fact he appears to have been on holiday at the time when The Sun, his former employer, broke the story claiming “a well-known presenter is accused of giving the teen more than £35,000 since they were 17 in return for sordid images.”
After Edwards’ wife Vicky Flind issued a statement revealing his identity and that he was in hospital suffering from “serious mental health issues”, The Sun defended its reporting. It has also:
- stressed it never made an allegation of criminality against Edwards;
- stressed it had never named Edwards or the young person involved in the allegations; and
- drawn a line under its reporting of the affair.
But The Sun has not responded to questions about its coverage, posed by Press Gazette, such as:
- Did the paper receive a denial from the young person, without publishing it, as claimed by that individual?
- How old was the young person when explicit pictures were first shared? Why was that person referred to repeatedly as a child?
- Is the mother and/or stepfather receiving payment from any part of News UK, as reported by The Guardian?
The Sun has said via a statement that it will “cooperate with the BBC’s internal investigation process”, adding: “We will provide the BBC team with a confidential and redacted dossier containing serious and wide-ranging allegations which we have received, including some from BBC personnel.”
The BBC ran its own stories about Edwards, alleging that he sent staff members “inappropriate” messages. The row divided commentators, with several former colleagues coming out in support of him.
Double standards? Telegraph columnist and free speech campaigner Toby Young said: “If Huw Edwards was a GB News presenter, the liberal Left would be screaming for his head. But because he’s a pillar of the BBC, they’re demanding the horrid tabloids leave him alone, claiming it’s a purely personal matter.”
Now, that theory is being tested. So far, the reporting has been largely sober, in the main focusing on Wootton’s response and that his former employers are investigating the claims. On social media, it has been a different story. A fact he pointed out in his six-minute televised monologue on Tuesday evening.
Unlike Edwards, who has not been on air since the first story broke, Wootton used his platform to tell GB News viewers he was the “target of a smear campaign by nefarious players with an axe to grind” and slammed the “cesspit of social media”.
He did not explicitly address any of the claims, including those suggesting he had used the name Martin Branning, but denied illegality or criminality, instead blaming “errors of judgement in the past” and an ex-partner, whom Wootton accused of abuse.
Unlike the BBC, which is publicly funded by the licence fee, GB News is privately owned by the hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall and investment firm Legatum, under the umbrella of a holding company, All Perspectives Ltd.
Marshall, a former Liberal Democrat turned arch Brexiteer, is one of the names in the frame to buy The Telegraph out of receivership. Other potential bidders include DMGT, the publisher of The Daily Mail; Sir William Lewis, a former editor of The Telegraph and foreign investors, including from Gulf states.
News UK has dedicated plenty of column inches to Schofield and Edwards, and some to the Wootton story. It has not yet covered the absence of Tom Newton Dunn, TalkTV’s political editor, who has been off screen since 8 June. Private Eye reported recently this followed “multiple complaints” of bad behaviour. By contrast, the BBC has covered the Edwards, Schofield and Wootton stories extensively, some have said, too much so. A News UK spokesperson said Newton Dunn was “on leave for personal reasons currently”.
For now, the issue facing some media outlets is this: having made the biggest noise about the behaviour of star presenters at the BBC and ITV, are they prepared to subject their own stars to similar scrutiny?
