Speaking truth to power was the mantra by which GB News was launched and yet they face-planted, hard, at the very first hurdle. Arch Royalist and ‘socialite’ Lady Colin Campbell was invited on to give Meghan Markle a good kicking by Dan Wootton on Tuesday. Just to give you a little background, among other things, Wootton is the former executive editor of The Sun newspaper, prior to that he worked as an Editor for The News of the World. He’s also previously worked for the Daily Mail & The MailOnline, as well as hosted a show on talkRADIO and guested on BBC Radio 5 Live.
Desperately trying to live up to the claims that GB News will function as “a balanced broadcaster that will feature all perspectives of the debate” Wooton asks Campbell a slightly probing question – has Prince Andrew damaged the royal ‘brand’ more than Harry and Meghan because of his support for the paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. Shockingly, Campbell’s response was to defend Andrew by attempting to diminish the veracity of the claims against him, suggesting that Epstein wasn’t really a paedophile at all and that he just liked post-pubescent girls and then attempts to push a conspiracy that the New York Attorney General is just going after Andrew in order to distract people from another more serious scandal involving ex-President Bill Clinton. Even Wootton and some of the other members of the panel, appeared to be taken aback by her claims.
Wootton, I think it’s safe to say, is not a fan of Meghan Markle bur far from speaking truth to power, it seems he’s made it his mission to protect those in power and even give them a voice. In an article in the MailOnline on Monday, he went on a bit of a rant to promote GB News and attacked, what he called, “the liberal elite”. According to Wootton, Beth Rigby (political editor, correspondent and news reporter for Sky News) is part of that elite because she dared to do her job and hold government ministers to account for breaking Covid rules. He then goes on to attack Adil Ray, a presenter on Good Morning Britain, for, once again, holding government ministers to account.
It would appear that in Wootton’s world, anyone who dares to actually hold the ruling elite to account, are the target? What’s truly baffling however is that Wootton goes on to claim that free speech and democracy is under attack from “a monolithic bloc of privileged and out of touch Londoners who want to tell you what you should think”… who might he be referring to I wonder? Not the same monolithic bloc of privileged and out of touch Londoners sitting in government surely? No, he goes on to clarify… just those who didn’t support Brexit. Oh and also the ones who support the Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellions movements, apparently.
The fact that Wootton chooses to provide a platform for people like Nigel Farage (a racist and the arch Brexiteer himself), anti-lockdown activist Lord Sumption, as well as Lord Alan Sugar (a man who, in the past, has spoken out in favour of sex discrimination and has expressed deeply racist views), Chinese virologist and conspiracist Li-Meng Yan (who has been linked to a political organisation affiliated with Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist) and Lady Colin Campbell, is hardly challenging the liberal elite, is it? Seems to me, anyone who doesn’t agree with Wootton’s political perspective gets slapped with the ‘liberal elite’ label.. rather than the ‘actual’ liberal elite that he supports and defends. This rather reminds me a little of the time the political right decided to weaponise anti-Semitism against people who actually have a track record of fighting anti-Semitism and even against left wing Jews.
I guess they think that if they just keep repeating the same lies, over and over again, then, eventually, they’ll stick and sadly, recent history tells us they’re probably right in that assumption.
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