Surprise: Dan Wootton is Just as Terrible as You Thought He Was
A look at the first 3 parts of Byline Times Investigation into Dan Wootton. How was he paying people off? Why is the media protecting him? All that and more.
The anticipated drops by Byline Times into Dan Wootton have started to take on the feel of Mueller Fridays. (For my non-American friends, on Fridays during Trump’s presidency we would grab some popcorn, watch Rachel Maddow don a black blazer and mesmerize us with her A Block, fire up Twitter and find out who got hit with a subpoena that week.) Mueller didn’t turn out to be our shining conservative savior and I hope the allegations against Dan Wootton do not take a similar trajectory. Evoking Trump is appropriate in this situation as Dan seems to have picked up Trump’s playbook for dealing with sexual allegations.
Timeline of Events
During the week of July 10th 2023 allegations against Dan Wootton by his former partner, Alex, and another man named Kevin bubbled up on Twitter. They were largely ignored by the British Media except The Guardian and Byline Times. Turns out Jim Waterson of The Guardian had been looking into “Martin Branning” (the alleged online alias of Dan Wootton used to terrorize individuals - largely in or adjacent to media) for years. Byline Times also had a 3 year investigation in the works and dropped parts 1 - 3 starting Tuesday, July 18th. Besides Dan’s embarrassing fundraiser to raise money to fight “dark forces” and a truly unhinged rant at the top of his GBNews nightly program where he went full DARVO (deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender), it’s been radio-silent from the rest of the media.
Takeaways From the Three Articles
The Byline Times investigation starts with part 1 and focuses on how Dan Wootton used online alias’s - Martin Branning, a fictitious show business agent, and Maria Joseph - to target heterosexual men for kompromat. It also mentions how Dan’s then-partner, Alex Truby, discovered while flat sitting for Wootton a padlocked holdall behind the washing machine and “found an external hard-drive inside containing a secretly-filmed video of an employee of The Sun engaged in sexual activity with their partner.” Part 2 shifts to Dan Wootton’s treatment of employees while he was at The Sun and how higher-ups and HR covered for Dan, paying off his victims and having them sign NDA’s. Part 3 zooms in on Dan’s first victim, an unnamed man who participated in the sex tape with his then-partner, The Sun employee, that Alex found behind Dan’s washing machine. It also details a decade of abuse and stalking from Martin Branning or “the third party he worked for.”
My Big Takeaways From These Three Parts:
1. Dan has issues around homosexuality. Dan is a gay man who has unmasked several men as gay or bisexual in his articles. He pens extremely anti-trans pieces. He’s alleged to have questioned straight men’s sexuality in the workplace, trying to get them to admit they are gay or bi. He mostly targeted heterosexual men online for photos and videos. He’s been accused of raping at least one man. The is man immersed in self-loathing. I am not going to armchair diagnose, but it seems pathological.
2. Dan’s behavior tells a larger story. I’m not surprised Dan has risen through the ranks, first in the tabloid world, and now in the UK version of Fox News - GBNews. Tabloid journalism appears to require skills other than actual journalism. Dan’s willingness to steal contacts out from under co-workers, gather compromising photos and videos of people he works with for blackmail, making the office atmosphere hostile and cutthroat, etc. is pretty in line with the job requirements of the tabloid industry. BUT, the tabloid industry of “the past” as The Claw, aka Rupert Murdoch, would like you to believe. (Little Inspector Gadget reference for the kids.) The main arguments Murdoch’s lawyers have made over Prince Harry and others suit against News UK are: 1. statute of limitations have passed and 2. it’s irrelevant because the news has reformed! The industry no longer needs saving from a young Christian Bale and a ragtag bunch of newsies who apparently have time in-between selling papers to choreograph entire numbers WITH perfect harmonies. (Fun fact about the Disney movie, The Newsies, when Christian Bale signed on it was not a musical and then they flipped it because everyone knows UNIONIZING IS MORE FUN IN SONG AND DANCE. Bale was displeased and, if you watch his big solo, “Santa Fe”, it make sense.)
The idea that the closure of News of the World (NOTW) and sentencing of men like Andy Coulson - former deputy editor to Rebekah Brooks at NOTW turned editor when Brooks left for the sister paper, The Sun - solved Britain’s media issues is as delusional as Dan Wootton believing his audience for GBNews watches him for spin-less, unbiased “reporting”. Many agree, including the founders of Byline Times, who used to be in that very same tabloid journalism world, who are now fighting for some of the very same people they targeted with illegal information gathering tactics.
3. The media is hellbent not on protecting Dan, but on what could spill out if Dan goes down. I’ve seen people theorize that Dan was doing this work at the behest of Murdoch, which doesn’t make sense to me. Why would Murdoch jeopardize his company and cost himself millions of pounds? I believe bringing down Dan opens the door to a repeat of 2012’s trials and Leveson Inquiries. Perhaps it would trigger Leveson Part 2, which was supposed to look into subterfuge between the police and the media. Rebekah Brooks in a bewildering or brazen moment admitted in 2003 to the Commons Committee that reporters had paid police. Seems like something worth investigating further but, no way said then-PM David Cameron. He was probably too busy riding horses with his friend Rebekah Brooks. Nothing like a long trot with the smell of sweet, sweet corruption drifting lazily in the air. Could a Labor takeover of Parliament in the next election restore a Barbieocracy and reignite a demand for Leveson 2? I’m probably far too jaded, but I’d like to believe it’s a possibility.
We know from Part 2 of Byline Times Investigation that Dan Wootton had access to the system that showed who in the newsroom were paying contacts for information. It wouldn’t have been hard to sneak in some payments to “contacts” that were actually people he was targeting in his effort to save up and travel the world to find the missing Horcrux. (Probably shouldn’t evoke J.K. Rowling, a person who Dan admires for her TERF views. Gross.) In the 3rd part of the investigation, the first victim begins receiving emails for £5,000 in exchange for “modeling and that sort of work.” It’s akin to Ken saying he does “beach” for work. But to the point, 22-year-old Dan Wootton, a lowly writer at NOTW isn’t pulling in enough to pay for multiple sex tapes. Sneaking it in as a business expense seems likely.
Then there are the secrets that have not come to light. The information that was apparently so bad that The Sun decided it was better to pay off accusers of Dan Wootton’s workplace behavior and have them sign NDA’s rather than go to an employee tribunal and have this become public info. I don’t believe Dan is protected because he’s some exceptional talent. If he were, he wouldn’t have to crime his way to the top. I think there’s too much that could come out that could hurt a lot of powerful people. That would be much more costly than 6 to 7 figure payouts.
Follow the money, but also ask yourself WHY. Why is it so important to protect Dan that most of the media remains mum on the story, despite descending on the Huw Edward, BBC scandal like the hyenas from The Lion King, with The Sun leading the way.
People like Dan would loosen the grip of their brother lion’s paw causing him to fall into a stampede if it meant moving up the ladder. No one in the media is acting out of the goodness of their hearts nor do I believe outlets like The Daily Mail or The Sun suddenly became interested in facts, like they’re vying for the Edward R. Murrow Award or whatever the UK equivalent is. There is much more to uncover.
From Byline Times recent tweets it appears Part 4 will drop soon (and I’m certain there is more to come). Stay tuned.
-Meredith
Source Notes/Additional Reading:
Prospect Mag 2023 Piece on Byline Times
Byline Times Investigation Part 1
Byline Times Investigation Part 2