4th January 2017

Back on 30th November last year, Merseyside Police released the above statement, revealing they’d never possessed any conclusive proof that a brick broke the shared stairwell window at the side of Sherlock House in Manor Road, Wallasey.

This was the window that prominent Labour politicians, local councillors, Merseyside PCC Jane Kennedy and large sections of the press / media falsely claimed to be Angela Eagle’s constituency office window – ‘broken by a Jeremy Corbyn supporter’.

On the same day of the police statement, we contacted a couple of hundred ‘political journalists’ on Tim Shipman’s list on Twitter in order to provide them with an update.  This is one example of that tweet, which was duplicated many times:

The selection of 50 journos appears further down, in no particular order…

After being tweeted on 30th November 2016 with the news, they found neither the time nor the inclination to respond or to follow up on what was a crucial, game-changing update to the Angela Eagle #Brickgate #FakeNews story….  the one which falsely claimed that Corbyn supporters had smashed Angela Eagle’s office window.

The reporting of these falsehoods had all been done routinely, in dumb defiance of any press regulation (pretty much non-existent under IPSO anyway) and in breach of their own ‘journalistic codes’ on accuracy …  and all without a shred of evidence.

For a dash of flavour, we’ve taken the opportunity to select and reproduce some of these journalists’ reactionary contributions to the #Brickgate Twitter debate at the time.

Back on 12th July 2016, in the heat of the moment, with feelings running high and the blood coursing through their veins (it was MEGA news, this broken window pane in an office in Wallasey, after all), some of them became quite fired up, and throwing caution to the wind, left all kinds of hostages to fortune peppered across their timelines.  Some fairly senior politicians weighed in too.

1 Sophy Ridge – SKY -sets the tone with an out-and-out falsehood. Peter Hain bombs:

2 Ian Dunt – Politics.co.uk – sans evidence, lets his own emotions get the better of him

3 Ed Conway – SKY

4 Paul Goodman – Conservative Home

5 Beth Rigby – SKY

6 Jane Merrick – Freelancer – Bawls into the ether, then engages non-brick-throwers

7 Andrew Sparrow – Guardian

8 Nick Cohen – Observer, Time, Spectator, Standpoint

9 Darren McCaffrey – SKY

10 John Rentoul – Tony Blair’s biographer – Independent

12 Giles Dilnot – Director of Comms – just gets carried away with himself

13 Robert Hutton – Bloomberg

14 Mark Wallace – Exec. Editor, Conservative Home

15 Gaby Hinsliff – Guardian

16 Michael Deacon – Daily Telegraph – Not realising ‘brick truthers’ now includes police

17 Christopher Cook – Policy editor, Newsnight

18 Ian Katz – Newsnight

19 Matthew D’Ancona – Guardian, Standard

20 Amol Rajan – BBC Media editor

21 Kevin Maguire – Daily Mirror – 3 months on, he’s too important for fact-checking

22 Martin Kettle – Guardian

23 Chris Giles – Economics Editor, Financial Times

24 Ed Howker – Channel 4 News, Dispatches

25 Anushka Asthana – Guardian – sent us quite a few DMs at the time, now ignoring us

26 Adam Boulton – SKY

27 Ian Birrell – Foreign reporter, columnist

28 Iain Martin – Editor, Reaction

29 Theo Usherwood – Political Editor, LBC

30 Sebastian Payne – Political leader writer, Financial Times

31 James Lyons – Deputy Political Editor, Sunday Times

32 Chris Mason – BBC

33 Paul Waugh – Huffington Post – He just knows he’s right – coz Labour HQ told him

34 Rafel Behr – Political columnist, Guardian

35 Christopher Hope – Assistant Editor, Daily Telegraph

36 David Hughes, Press Association

37 Patrick Wintour,Diplomatic Editor, Guardian

38 James Millar – Freelancer

39 Andrew Picken – Politics and Investigations Editor, Sunday Post

40 Sam Macrory – Political journalist, BBC

41 Tony Grew – Parliamentary journalist

42 Torcuil Crichton – Westminster Editor, Daily Record

43 David Aaronovitch – Columnist, Times

44 Jason Groves – Deputy Political Editor, Daily Mail

45 Simon Jenkins – Guardian, Standard

46 Francis Elliott – Political Editor, Times

47 Andy McSmith – Freelancer

48 Polly Toynbee – Columnist, Guardian

49 Ben Wright – Political Correspondent, BBC

50 Michael Crick – Political Correspondent, Channel 4 News – ……….interesting……….

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