Seen this posted elsewhere taken from a site called ‘Votewatch’, which the poster credits as a reputable source….
IS THE BYLINE TIMES A CREDIBLE AND RELIABLE NEWS OUTLET?
The short answer is no. The Byline Times has a history of printing false information and politically-motivated smear pieces.
More concerningly, the Byline Times has been successfully sued multiple times, including on one occasion for publishing false information relating to sexual abuse allegations.
In 2017, regulatory body Impress, of which the Byline Times was a member, ruled that its journalists had lied when reporting about allegations related to former Prime Minister Edward Heath, with Byline Times being forced to pay compensation and then ultimately deciding to abandon Impress and thus become unregulated.
The site’s owner, Peter Jukes, is a former Labour member who frequently engages in online trolling and attacks against people whom he disagrees with politically, using Byline Times to produce propaganda, often proven to contain demonstrably false information, to attack his critics.
Mr Jukes himself has been accused of sexual impropriety, with some of the allegations first being published by Politicalite. In retaliation, two years ago Jukes launched a crowdfunder, claiming that he would use all of the money raised to sue Politicalite and anyone involved in publishing the story containing the allegations made against him – including the editor of VoteWatch, yours truly.
Jukes raised over £60,000 from his followers on social media. To date, however, none of the people whom Jukes mentioned in his crowdfunder have ever been sued. Neither Jukes nor the law firm he uses (with one of the senior lawyers at the company being his close friend) have filed any legal action against any of the individuals. The Byline Times and Peter Jukes have also failed to make donors aware of this, have not disclosed what the money was spent on, and have not offered any of the donors refunds.
This is not the only example of Peter Jukes, a well-known conspiracy theorist, using his website and political sensationalism on social media to mislead donors – as VoteWatch will reveal in an exclusive next week.
Furthermore, the Byline Times has accepted large donations from millionaires linked to antisemitism and from anti-west conspiracy theorists based in China.
Recently, one of the Byline Times’ most well-known journalists was found to have been publishing demonstrably false information to demonise Israel, before being slammed for tweeting racist and xenophobic comments about Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The Byline Times appears not to employ any fact-checkers and has been caught printing false information throughout its existence – always targeting Conservatives and the right-wing with demonstrably lies. Recent examples include a fake ‘investigation’ relating to Priti Patel.
In fact, Jukes and the Byline Times have been embroiled in a string of scandals including links to antisemites, and the publication of fake news, including repeatedly printing disinformation about a ‘pedophile ring’ that was later proven to not have existed.
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