Online Hate and Offline Violence: What We Learnt from the Dan Wootton Saga
Support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
It took a dumb minute staring at the email for the penny to drop: we'd been hacked. It was a request for two-factor authenticated access to a confidential research document to do with Byline Times' 2023 exposé of the GB News star presenter Dan Wootton as a serial sexual catfish.
Just two other people ought to have known the sensitive cloud-shared file - a small part of an exhaustive three-year investigation - even existed. And the name on the screen was neither of them.
I rang my colleague Tom Latchem for our usual (encrypted) morning catch-up: "Hello mate - erm, have you noticed anything strange going on?"
"Well, someone smeared blood on my car windscreen last night. But apart from that…"
EXCLUSIVE
Dan Wootton Hit With £7,500 Costs Over Failed Court Bid to Name 'Catfishing Victim'
The former GB News host failed to overturn a High Court order protecting the anonymity of a man he allegedly catfished into sharing sexual material online
Dan Evans and Tom Latchem
Things had taken a turn for the unusual the day before. Wootton had given a six-minute prime-time live TV monologue in response to a Byline Times exclusive unmasking him as the fictitious showbiz agents Martin Branning and Maria Joseph - two online identities connected to more than 10 years of catfishing activities targeting a large number of men and women, many in the public eye, with attempts to obtain sexual images by deception.
Wootton addressed the story by admitting to unspecified "errors of judgement in the past" - but denied criminal behaviour. He said: "Who doesn't have regrets? Should I be cancelled for them many years later, or do you accept I have learned and changed?"
Wootton then went an unexpected step further. He told the GB News viewers that our reporting was politically-motivated - a "smear campaign" by a "hard-left blog" and an affront to "free speech" orchestrated by "dark forces out to try and take this brilliant channel down".
ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE
Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.
PAY ANNUALLY - £39.50 A YEAR
PAY MONTHLY - £3.75 A MONTH
MORE OPTIONS
We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.
"We have all found ourselves under attack," Wootton said. "And that's because GB News is the biggest threat to the establishment in decades, and they will stop at nothing to destroy us."
Now, there is no evidence Wootton could have foreseen - or was any part of - the events that followed this extraordinary broadcast, which propelled the story on to the ITV national news bulletins and turbocharged it on X. But things did get interesting afterwards.
'Blood Will Flow'
For the record, Byline Times is neither 'dark force' nor 'establishment'. It is, however, a staunch defender of lawful free expression and a fan of good journalistic values.
Yet here was a billionaire-funded, Ofcom-regulated broadcaster with mainstream pretensions framing legitimate reporting on a public figure falsely as an act of Culture War.
The worrying episodes multiplied in the days after broadcast. Alongside the hack attack - 'stealer' malware masquerading as "information that you may find useful for your investigation" - and Tom's bloody windscreen, a further anonymous email arrived to the newsroom headed: "Over Dan Wootton".
"See you at your office and blood will flow," it promised.
There was also a phone call to the personal mobile number of an executive editor. "You're going to regret this," said an anonymous northern British male voice; an alleged act of intimidation that remains a police matter today (and on which Byline Times will be reporting in due course).
New...
Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
It took a dumb minute staring at the email for the penny to drop: we'd been hacked. It was a request for two-factor authenticated access to a confidential research document to do with Byline Times' 2023 exposé of the GB News star presenter Dan Wootton as a serial sexual catfish.
Just two other people ought to have known the sensitive cloud-shared file - a small part of an exhaustive three-year investigation - even existed. And the name on the screen was neither of them.
I rang my colleague Tom Latchem for our usual (encrypted) morning catch-up: "Hello mate - erm, have you noticed anything strange going on?"
"Well, someone smeared blood on my car windscreen last night. But apart from that…"
EXCLUSIVE
Dan Wootton Hit With £7,500 Costs Over Failed Court Bid to Name 'Catfishing Victim'
The former GB News host failed to overturn a High Court order protecting the anonymity of a man he allegedly catfished into sharing sexual material online
Dan Evans and Tom Latchem
Things had taken a turn for the unusual the day before. Wootton had given a six-minute prime-time live TV monologue in response to a Byline Times exclusive unmasking him as the fictitious showbiz agents Martin Branning and Maria Joseph - two online identities connected to more than 10 years of catfishing activities targeting a large number of men and women, many in the public eye, with attempts to obtain sexual images by deception.
Wootton addressed the story by admitting to unspecified "errors of judgement in the past" - but denied criminal behaviour. He said: "Who doesn't have regrets? Should I be cancelled for them many years later, or do you accept I have learned and changed?"
Wootton then went an unexpected step further. He told the GB News viewers that our reporting was politically-motivated - a "smear campaign" by a "hard-left blog" and an affront to "free speech" orchestrated by "dark forces out to try and take this brilliant channel down".
ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE
Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.
PAY ANNUALLY - £39.50 A YEAR
PAY MONTHLY - £3.75 A MONTH
MORE OPTIONS
We're not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.
"We have all found ourselves under attack," Wootton said. "And that's because GB News is the biggest threat to the establishment in decades, and they will stop at nothing to destroy us."
Now, there is no evidence Wootton could have foreseen - or was any part of - the events that followed this extraordinary broadcast, which propelled the story on to the ITV national news bulletins and turbocharged it on X. But things did get interesting afterwards.
'Blood Will Flow'
For the record, Byline Times is neither 'dark force' nor 'establishment'. It is, however, a staunch defender of lawful free expression and a fan of good journalistic values.
Yet here was a billionaire-funded, Ofcom-regulated broadcaster with mainstream pretensions framing legitimate reporting on a public figure falsely as an act of Culture War.
The worrying episodes multiplied in the days after broadcast. Alongside the hack attack - 'stealer' malware masquerading as "information that you may find useful for your investigation" - and Tom's bloody windscreen, a further anonymous email arrived to the newsroom headed: "Over Dan Wootton".
"See you at your office and blood will flow," it promised.
There was also a phone call to the personal mobile number of an executive editor. "You're going to regret this," said an anonymous northern British male voice; an alleged act of intimidation that remains a police matter today (and on which Byline Times will be reporting in due course).
New...
Activity