The blog admitted they "screwed up".
A right wing website called Guido Fawkes has admitted “we screwed up” after it claimed that Labour leadership contender Rebecca Long-Bailey was married to a multi-millionaire.
The website falsely claimed that Long-Bailey’s husband Steve was the multi-millionaire director of a chemical company.
Long-Bailey laughed off the anonymously-authored claim saying “clearly I married the wrong Steve Bailey…tripped up there didn’t I?”
Guido Fawkes later apologised to her on Twitter, saying: “We got the wrong Bailey. Two Steve Baileys working in the chemical industry. A lesson to us to never follow up leads from Wikipedia.”
The website does not list its authors for individual articles, so it’s not clear who made the mistake, but its two reporters are Tom Harwood and Christian Calgie. Harwood appears regularly on BBC politics programmes like Question Time.
Last week, Guido Fawkes labelled Nazi-saluting football supporters “Italian tourists” and said a Jewish Labour MP was wrong to say they should “get their heads kicked in”.
The article later changed “Italian tourists” to “Italian football fans” but did not take the story down and did not make a note that the correction had been made – as is conventional in the media.
8 Responses to “Right-wing blog forced to apologise after relying on Wikipedia to smear Rebecca Long-Bailey”
Richard Gadsden
Their RSS feed does show the author of articles, and it was Christian Calgie.
Carol Forsberg
Pathetic commentary in the usual binary format from the Right. Whether you’re rich, poor or just middling, what makes a socialist is someone who cares about others, wants a decent life to everyone, is not racist and who stands up for the vulnerable. Someone who pays their tax gladly in the hopes that it will be used wisely for the benefit of all and regards equality as a human right.
Labour's Filthy Hospitals
What makes a socialist is dodging inheritance tax and having two kitchens in your mansion. You pretend the smaller one is the only one and when challenged you say you only use it for tea and quick snacks. Solidarity, comrades!