Dan Wootton’s One-Man Fightback Against The False Allegations Industry

"Dan Wootton" by Sean Bw Parker

In 2023, journalist Dan Wootton was suspended, then sacked, from his job as GB News presenter for laughing at a joke made by Laurence Fox on Wootton’s evening show. Fox said he ‘wouldn’t shag that’ in reference to Ava Santina Evans of Politics Joe, who was seen to have belittled male suicide on another programme. Father Calvin Robinson was also sacked from his own GBN show after he expressed support for both men.

Wootton’s nightly right-leaning critiques of international geopolitics, celebrity wrongdoing, royal bizarreness and ‘woke’ excess were all fine and within GB News’ proud ‘free speech’ remit, but a bit of old-school pub banter had apparently crossed a line. Whatever GB News’ claims for being the upstart media renegade - which it admittedly was with the quality Headliners (now cancelled) and still extant Free Speech Nation - it was clearly in hoc to the power-feminist management - now rife in both sexes - in the rest of western legacy media.

Free speech isn’t just being able to criticise Putin, Trump or Islam, it’s also about being able to use casual/humorous language - which shag, bonk, slag, twat, poof, slut, creep, dick, tosser or bitch might all indeed be. Excellent words all, I’m sure you’ll agree, well George Carlin most certainly might..

Dan had written for The Daily Mail and The Sun (probably amongst many others) before his GB News stint, and had sat high in editorial boards - so was aware of the politics, machinations and more - but when the cancellation axe falls upon your own neck, things get a bit more real. Dan duly took all his many hundreds of thousands of followers built up over the years to YouTube, X, Substack and his new Outspoken show, and immediately got actor Kevin Spacey on for the latter’s first post-cancellation interview of his own.

Spacey had been found not guilty of ‘sexual assault’ in two post MeToo-era trials in the UK and US, and was brilliantly frank about his past appetites, behaviours, and drinking. Dan listened carefully and attentively, as he and the audience realised the impact highly mediated cancellations can have on their subjects - with all the intended ‘social shaming’ factors that involves.

Some online critics remained angry that Dan had supported Amber Heard during her court cases against Johnny Depp, but the first thing Dan did on Outspoken was to apologise for his ‘going along with the in-crowd’ with that story (having Mr Depp on one day to talk about his own ordeal would be quite something).

One of Outspoken’s main focuses is on how ‘captured’ the mainstream media is on every single narrative, from Brexit to Covid to MeToo to Black Lives Matter, from Trump to Farage to Putin to Israel. Journalism is supposed to investigate these issues, not just parrot them. There always have been alternatives to the theories propounded, with the viewer getting increasingly exasperated from in front of TV and (admittedly more interactive) computer screens; Dan taps into this exasperation directly - but now with the ‘other side of the fire’ intensity of the actually cancelled.

Speaking of intensity, Dan recently had former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor on Outspoken, now many months after Kevin Spacey, and Proctor was eloquently coruscating in his dismantling of media-justice system collusion and how that feeds what Jonathan King has dubbed the False Allegations Industry. Proctor, now president of FACT (Falsely Accused in the Context of Trust) had been falsely accused of rape, torture, even murder by fantasist Carl Beech, who was later given a 16-year sentence himself. The claims were amplified by LBC’s James O’Brien and MP Tom Watson - now head of GB Music and a ‘sir’ - but no apology from them to Harvey has yet been forthcoming.

The ‘victimhood’ narrative rules and still sells papers, ads and clicks, unless the victim is the falsely accused, when things suddenly get awkward and the story finds itself as a short paragraph at the bottom of page 16, if its lucky. While the ‘online right’ is divided in its opinion of Reform UK and Nigel Farage, the latter is its best known name, and is currently leagues ahead of ruling Labour in the polls. This lead, and Dan’s viewer numbers, indicate the public understanding of the machinations of the False Allegations Industry even if they might not feel comfortable saying so at certain soirees and dinner parties.

While Piers Morgan does have those who have been falsely accused or wrongfully convicted on his Uncensored show, Radio 4’s Emma Barnett recently wrote a Substack piece bemoaning the fact she can’t get ‘actual rapists’ on her show to talk about it, due to broadcasting restrictions. Not much scrutiny on the processes that lead to 70,000 false allegations per year there. What Dan Wootton’s Outspoken realises is that these approaches have an innate trust in a justice system, which now shows on a weekly basis that it is in lockstep with a captured, mutually benefiting media - and is seemingly now engaged in a cathartic, clear-eyed campaign to bring down the whole anti-judicial shebang.

By Sean Bw Parker