Byline - Guido Fawkes In Trouble

Right now, the domino effect is taking hold within the world of the media establishment and its hangers-on over recent hatchet jobs on Byline Media, the attempts to link that site to campaigning group Hacked Off, and the smearing of one Eric X Li, one of Byline’s backers. The first example of the domino effect was when the Daily Mail admitted their claim that funding a Byline contributor was not the same as funding Byline itself.

Behold the arbiter of truth and decency

That admission knocked over a key defence being mounted by the Sunday Telegraph, after Andrew “Transcription Error” Gilligan’s hatchet job last weekend was subjected to serious ridicule. In turn, the Tel has rowed back on its claim that Li “wrote regularly for The 4th Media, a website promoting anti-Western conspiracy theories and supporting authoritarian regimes”, because Li has never written for The 4th Media.

The site is an aggregator, copying and pasting from all manner of other media outlets. So the Tel changed Gilligan’s article to read “Articles by Mr Li are published on 4th Media”. This has produced the second example of the domino effect, as by making its correction, the Tel has knocked over the main thrust of a subsequent hit piece by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog.

A clear smear to kick off the post ...

The Fawkes mob used Gilligan’s claim about Eric X Li to smear him as an anti-Semite. To this end, a photo of Li was overlaid with the logos of Byline Media and The 4th Media, together with the quotes “Jewish Banksters”, “Islamic State vs Jewish State”, and “9/11 certainly a false flag operation”. The intention is clearly to suggest that Li is the author of those sentiments, or that this represents his views.

It gets worse for The Great Guido: the claim “Eric Li’s articles and lectures were published and cross-posted by 4th Media ‘with permission’” suggests that Li approved of the copying and pasting. But the phrase “with permission” is only present because it, too, was part of the copying and pasting. And it gets worse still in very short order.

... and here's the rest, in case deletion is attempted

The 4th Media, as Richard Bartholomew has pointed out, has copied and pasted articles from “the Daily Mail, the Spectator (an article by Peter Hitchens), and… erm… the Daily Telegraph. Clearly, The 4th Media pirates whatever material takes its fancy, including any copyright notice that may have been in the source”. Perhaps the Fawkes rabble would like to try and connect those three titles to its suggestion of anti-Semitism, or maybe not.

Rowing back from Gilligan’s article has not only shown that the Telegraph brand has fallen a long way from the time when it could be regarded as a paper of record, but has also exposed the Fawkes folks as puppets of the media establishment, ready to join the feeding frenzy, but equally disposable when push comes to shove. As can be seen, their post making arguably defamatory suggestions about Eric X Li has been screen shotted.

Defaming media-savvy millionaires for a bit of fun was always going to be a risky business. The Great Guido may have just taken one risk too far. Another fine mess, once again.