Julia Hartley Dooda Marr Show Whoppers

Yesterday’s appearance by Arron Banks, the alleged “man who bankrolled Brexit”, on The Andy Marr Show™ was not the only part of the programme where those pursuing answers to where all that money came from were gratuitously slagged off. Banksy’s turn was preceded by yet another spot - not decided by popular vote - on the paper review panel for self-promoting Z-list TalkRADIO host Julia Hartley Brewer.

As befits any obedient Murdoch asset, Ms Hartley Dooda used the opportunity given her by the Observer’s front page revelations on how the Banks empire and its staff were mobilised in service of the Leave EU operation to put the boot in on one of the names on the by-line. To no surprise at all, that journalist was Carole Cadwalladr.

We know who you are, thanks

When the Observer story came up, Ms Hartley Dooda suggested that the paper’s journalism was suspect, because it had published corrections to some of Ms Cadwalladr’s previous articles. There would, she claimed, be a correction on Page 46 of next Sunday’s paper, so it was all rubbish. She was not challenged by Marr.

Ms Cadwalladr was not happy about this. “Love that the one reference to @observerUK's significant new revelations on @arron_banks on #Marr is by Julia Hartley-Brewer smearing our work. Stay classy, #Marr”. And as for that “correction” claim, there was more.

“The ‘correction’ meme that Hartley-Brewer references was put out by Guido who channels dirt on me that comes directly from @arron_banks. Note, that everything we 'corrected' was due to legal pushback from AIQ - but was later confirmed to be true by the ICO's interim report”. Ms Hartley Dooda got her dirt from a borderline Fake News site.

And just to make sure everyone knew what she meant, Ms Cadwalladr signed off with “So, essentially Julia is working here as an @arron_banks mouthpiece. Note @afneil picked up all the Guido stuff too”. Ms Hartley Dooda was not happy. She was also not making any sense (no change there, then). Nor had she bothered reading Ms Cadawalladr’s Tweets.

“Carole, I’ve met Arron a handful of times & have absolutely no idea how his business is financed. I don’t speak for him. If there’s any wrongdoing, it should be investigated. It is a matter of fact that your newspaper has often had to correct factual mistakes in your articles”. If you don’t know how his business is financed, then why slag off the Observer and suggest it’s wrong? As for the corrections - read what Carole already said.

But by now she was away and running. “Love this thread of tweets from Carole about #Marr. It’s like watching a Remoaner (use of abuse? Check!) breakdown in slow motion. It basically translates as ‘Why isn’t everyone talking about *my* article? If you don’t talk about it the way I want, I will scweam and scweam until I make myself sick’”. Self-promotion artiste tries to call self-promotion on someone else No Shock Horror.

And on she droned. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a correction printed about an article I’ve written in 25 years as a journo and certainly no legal complaints. I like to check my facts first”. Except when appearing on the Marr Show, that is.

Also, it must have been a pretty boring and conformist career that brought no complaints over a 25 year period. Jealousy, eh? I’ll just leave that one there.

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