Last week, Laurence Fox went on Dan Wootton’s GB News show and Fox went on a misogynistic tirade against a white female journalist. Dan Wootton laughed and smirked the whole time, even though (reportedly) his staff and producers tried to shut down Fox and force Wootton to apologize on air just minutes later. Within 24 hours, Wootton was suspended from the British (fake) news channel. Hilariously, the Mail piled on: they officially fired Wootton following a month-long suspension of his column. While GB News hasn’t officially fired Wootton, Byline Times now reports that Wootton has been informed that his services will no longer be necessary. Not only that, Wootton is now such a pariah in the British media that he’s considering a move back to New Zealand.
Dan Wootton needs a “miracle” to save his £600,000-a-year job as GB News’ star presenter as owner Sir Paul Marshall seeks to “detoxify” the brand as he bids for the Daily Telegraph, Byline Times can exclusively report. GB News is also cutting ties with a third broadcaster – Calvin Robinson, who was a regular face on Wootton’s show – and is reviewing the employment of a number of other employees ahead of a further Byline Times investigation to be published tomorrow.
And last night a GB News editorial source told this newspaper: “Dan Wootton has left the building and a lot of people are relieved. There has been anger and disappointment about all the negative attention. Good journalists have been questioning their futures at the channel. Dan’s face was left off a big promotion last week. It will be a miracle if he’s seen here again.”
The absence of 40-year-old Wootton has rocked the network he joined as a founding host two years and three months ago, and which Robinson on Friday credited him as being “significant” to the “building” of through his influence on recruitment both “behind the cameras as well as on-screen talent”.
While Wootton smiled through a public appearance on Friday night at Westminster’s Central Hall, this newspaper can reveal that he is privately considering, following the loss on Thursday of his £250,000-a-year column for MailOnline, quitting the UK to return to his native New Zealand. A source close to the situation told Byline Times: “It has been made clear to Dan that he will not be broadcasting again on GB News any time soon, just as he will not be writing for MailOnline. Right now, he feels as if he might prefer just to go back to Wellington to be near family.”
Although the crunch for Wootton at GB News may have seemed to come swiftly following the Ava Evans incident – in which he smirked as Fox branded Evans a “little woman” and asked “who’d want to shag that?” – Byline Times can reveal that GB News’ founding stakeholder Sir Paul Marshall has been losing patience with the journalist for at least two months.
Not only did [Wootton’s on-air denials of catfishing and blackmail] place Wootton in breach of his employer’s own Editorial Charter, which outlaws ad hominem attacks on individuals, it highlighted a tabloid presenting style known to be disliked by 64-year-old Sir Paul, who despite having no control over GB News’ output, holds the purse strings on an asset that lost around £28.3 million in the last accounting period, according to new analysis by Byline Times.
[From Byline Times]
Basically, Sir Paul Marshall wants to buy the Telegraph and become the Tory kingmaker, and while he’s getting his house in order for the purchase, he’s cleaning house at broke-ass GB News. While Wootton was some kind of “get” for GB News at the time, Marshall has always been queasy about “Wootton’s extreme tabloid style.” Wootton and Fox’s on-air mess was the final nail in the coffin. There has been a lot of conversation about “why this time and not all of hours of hate devoted to the Duchess of Sussex?” I’ve seen some of the clips too – there was clearly some corporate policy at GB News that they could say whatever they wanted about Meghan, the more insulting and nasty the better. So I don’t know, I guess GB News is letting the world know that their line in the sand is “being misogynistic about white women.” As for Wootton crawling back to New Zealand… it makes me feel sorry for New Zealand. You know he’ll find some media job there and make everyone’s life miserable.
Photos courtesy of GB News & Avalon Red.
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