Dame Ali J 🐟

Disclosure: I occasionally write for @BylineTimes and for several titles in the Bylines Network, because truth and critique matter. Andrew Gilligan’s hit piece in Paul Marshall’s Spectator asks: “Why is Labour funnelling money to Bylines Networks?” Textbook “just asking questions!” His opening sentence does most of the work. The grant goes to “a group closely linked to hard-left conspiracy theorists!” Follow the links and the money goes to Bylines Networks, which shares directors with Byline Times, some of whose output he then attacks: guilt by association at two removes. He never attaches the words “conspiracy theorist” to any named person, and “hard-left” comes with no evidence whatsoever. The Local News Fund is a competitive DCMS scheme, with an independent steering board advising on awards. Bylines Networks won two separate grants, one for local outlets and one for infrastructure. Only two organisations won in both categories, which is why the combined total looks large. Gilligan presents it as a single sum. Byline Times has since confirmed that it receives no government funding, and that its directors take no money from the regional network, have no editorial role in it and are not involved in running it. Gilligan says almost nothing about the projects funded or the nine local titles that will deliver them. Most of his evidence concerns Byline Times, or his own dispute with Byline.com from a decade ago. His one claim about the wider network, that other articles “could fairly be described as propaganda”, comes with no example. He cites a Bylines site calling the plagiarism claims against Jason Arday “largely unsubstantiated”, apparently as proof of bias. Yet every formal investigation, by Arday’s PhD university and by the academic publishers concerned, failed to uphold plagiarism. His thesis stands, and the journal papers were corrected for citation errors, not retracted. On that point, the Bylines site was accurate. Halfway through, he moves on with the words “speaking of attack operations which we can substantiate”. Draw your own conclusions about the rest. He criticises others for failing to declare interests. His byline describes him as a “former No.10 advisor”. It doesn’t mention that he is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange, an opaquely funded right-wing think tank. He ends by questioning Byline’s trustworthiness. Let’s examine his own record. 2004: Lord Hutton found his central allegation about the government’s Iraq dossier “unfounded”. Gilligan resigned from the BBC, as did its chairman and DG. 2016: the Telegraph apologised to businessman Mujibul Islam and paid substantial damages over a series of articles, principally by Gilligan, which suggested he had benefited from corruption. The paper accepted the allegations were wholly untrue. 2016: the Sunday Telegraph apologised to Ifhat Smith, a mother who had spoken publicly about her son’s treatment under Prevent, and paid her compensation over a Gilligan article. It accepted she was not an Islamic extremist and had complained in good faith. 2017: the Telegraph paid £20,000 in damages to Haras Ahmed over the same Gilligan story, accepting that its allegations were wholly without foundation. 2018: the Sunday Telegraph paid Mohammed Kozbar, of Finsbury Park mosque, £30,000 to settle a libel claim over a Gilligan article. 2018: the Sunday Times corrected his claim that the charity Mermaids had been banned by the High Court from contact with a family. No such order existed. 2019: IPSO ruled another of his Sunday Times articles, on transgender people’s access to toilets, misleading. And while he holds others’ links to Iran’s Press TV against them, he presented a programme on that state broadcaster himself until 2009. Byline has spent years scrutinising The Spectator’s owner, Paul Marshall, and its editor, Michael Gove. It’s hard not to read this piece as the magazine settling scores with a critic, under cover of concern for public money.