On July 17th Dan Evans and Tom Latchem, writing for independent media outlet Byline Times, published the article:“GB News Star Dan Wootton Unmasked in Cash-for-Sexual Images Catfishing Scandal”This is the first national coverage of the allegations against Dan Wootton from a reputable news publisher.The story cites a range of allegations, some of which would involve criminality, made against a person identifying as “Martin Branning”. The article alleges that Wootton himself is “Branning”.

Commenting, Hacked Off CEO Nathan Sparkes said,“If these allegations are true, Sun publisher News UK and Mail publisher DMGT will have serious questions to answer about what they knew of the allegations and what steps, if any, they took to investigate them."If yet another scandal has been allowed to fester in the newsrooms and executive offices of these publishers, this adds further weight to the arguments for Leveson Part Two which would have tackled the cover-up culture across the press and which the government abandoned after surrendering to furious lobbying by the newspaper industry. This is the opportunity for those parties who believe in holding powerful institutions to account and protecting ordinary people to commit to re-establishing Leveson 2.”

On comparisons with how The Sun handled the Huw Edwards allegations:

“The integrity of Byline Times’ report on Wootton speaks for itself. Here the allegations include criminality, they are sourced by multiple victims, and those victims lead and endorse the allegations. In comparison, The Sun’s recent story on Huw Edwards did not involve any criminality (though this was implied by the Sun in some coverage), involved allegations that relied on a third party source, were strongly denied by the alleged “victim", and for which no evidence was produced by the paper.“Yet the response to the allegations against Wootton from almost every national media outlet has been slow and timid, in stark contrast to coverage of the Edwards story which dominated the headlines.“For days allegations against Mr Wootton appeared on Twitter, and yet it was not until Popbitch and then finally Byline Times fully broke the story that some outlets have belatedly, and reluctantly it seems, picked it up.“This is evidence of the extraordinary power and hypocrisy of the national press, that they can and will shut down coverage of their own alleged wrongdoing while confecting scandal among their broadcast media competitors.”

For comment:press@hackinginquiry.org