Alex Hilton reaches new heights of idiocy
Dear Alex Hilton,
One wonders whether a lack of intelligence is a pre-requisite for wanting to join the Labour Party, given the dearth of talent in the Cabinet and among the parliamentary party. It seems as though the same question may apply to prospective parliamentary candidates like yourself as well. Yesterday you admitted that you had created a fake site and statement from the Mayor of Baltimore, Sheila Dixon, in which the “Mayor” attacked the shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling for his suggestion that some parts of Britain are like the TV series ‘The Wire’, which is set in Baltimore.
The fake statement said: “This week I was alerted to a speech made by a Member of the British Parliament, a Mr Chris Grayling, who suggested his country should fear becoming like our city of Baltimore as portrayed in The Wire. To present a television show as the real Baltimore is to perpetuate a fiction that dishonours our city.” A spokesperson for Ms Dixon said that Mr Grayling’s chief of staff had even called the Mayor’s office to apologise “that a political discussion in the UK became a distraction for the people and Government of Baltimore”. The story was reported in The Independent and The Guardian, on the BBC and in the Baltimore Sun. Yesterday, you stated that you’d made it all up. “The Chris Grayling thing was funny, just saying what he was saying was funny, and I was in a surreal mood,” you said. You also claimed that you never thought people would fall for it, only expecting that people “might blog it, saying it was a funny joke”. The fake website contained a few clues that all was not as it seemed. In a hidden message – which viewers could access by right-clicking and selecting “view page source” – you admitted the prank: “Sitting in the office on a hot August afternoon, I was fantasising that I was Mayor of Baltimore and how annoyed I would be.”
A “surreal mood”, eh? You think that setting up a quick smear campaign is acceptable because you were in a “surreal mood”? Wow, why didn’t McBride use the same excuse?! He could have saved himself a lot of trouble if people had only understood that he was in a “surreal mood”. What about this was supposed to be a “funny joke”? Chris Grayling’s comments had certainly got a few people’s backs up and several bloggers were quick to have their say on the matter, so there was already a debate in motion. You, sadly, thought it was a “funny joke” to throw some falsehoods into the mix when a decent, honest discussion was taking place about the merits and demerits of comparing UK cities to Baltimore. I really am struggling to see the humour here and I suspect that other people will too. I seem to remember a certain Derek Draper using the same defence that ‘it was all just a joke’, yet if memory serves me correctly the newspapers and electorate were both unconvinced by this ridiculous assertion. Furthermore, the fact that you were “fantasising” about someone attacking the Conservatives is just plain disturbing. Obviously Labour bloggers such as yourself have reached such a state of despair that you actually have to ‘fantasise’ about people disliking the Conservatives and voting Labour instead. The real Mayor Dixon was unamused by this whole incident and released a statement saying: “The perpetrator of this crude joke has wasted the time and money of the city as well as the local and international media with this distraction. The city’s law department as well as the Mayor’s Office of Information Technology have been informed and are currently investigating this violation of the city’s website for copyright infringement.” Frankly, I don’t blame them. You have wilfully deceived the entire UK media using someone else’s identity and Iain Dale has discovered that Mayor Dixon is, understandably, considering taking legal action against you.
After you banned me from LabourHome for highlighting the idiocy within the Labour Party and later reached new heights of hypocrisy by asking LabourHome readers to pay for your legal case after something dubious appeared on LabourHome, having previously attacked other people for making the same mistake, I don’t mind admitting that I have no time for your antics. Even so, this idiocy totally undermines the credibility of all bloggers, not just you, in the eyes of the mainstream media and the public. Some of us try to use the blogosphere for debating and discussing topical issues whereas you are apparently more interested in creating lies and peddling deceit about the Conservative Party. If this is what awaits us from parliamentary candidates within the Labour Party, they really are doomed for years to come. So much for learning the lessons from Smeargate about using the internet for the right reasons in politics.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
I heard about this yesterday. What do you expect. No government has been so bankrupt of ideas, morality (and now currency) as this one.
Only the most foolish of rats wishes to join a sinking ship, especially one that is rudderless, where the captain is half blind and the first mate is a thief.
Alex Hilton, is undouubtedly a very foolish man.
It seems that in the dying months of this ghastly and desperate Labour government pretty much everything they and their wannabees now say, write and do, just serve to emphasise what so many of us now see almost as axiomatic; they just don’t get it.
Mind you, Labour aspirants having been fed a surfeit of curruption, lies, sleaze and dirty tricks, beginning with Blair and his acolytes, and so ably continued by Brown and his cronies, it’s perhaps not surprising how they behave in imitation.
Tony, I see what you’re saying but at the same time I think this was a foolish thing to do even if the Government were 20 points ahead in the polls.
Talwin, the imitation of Draper and McBride in terms of stupidity and arrogance should also be included in that list.
I’ve liked some of the things that AH has done, and thoroughly disliked others – he’s targeted some attacks too personally at people who shouldn’t be in the line of fire. I thought that this one was good, and embarrassed some people who need to be embarrassed – and also exposed the problems of a “rush to publish” culture.
The reminder of how stupid newspapers can be came at exactly the time we need it, when we are being told that high quality journalism can only come from expensive, paid, sources.
One thing that needs a lot of attention is the use of writers to cover subjects outside their areas expertise. Unless I’ve messed up my research, the Indy is covering this story with pieces written by a historian; perhaps that is why they missed the clues in the source code. Or perhaps they should have phone the Mayor to check.
I think the Mayor of Baltimore is huffing and puffing without very much she can actually do, as this was clearly parody, and is probably covered by “satire” for copyright laws etc.
If I have it correctly, the Baltimore Sun got the story after the police department told them that the Mayor had started the new Twitter account that they had been talking about for some time.
So for me this is a story which is mainly about the reporting process.
“One wonders whether a lack of intelligence is a pre-requisite for wanting to join the Labour Party…”
One used to wonder. One now knows!
Matt, obviously a few journalists have some egg on their face about this, but claiming that it was all a “funny joke” is still ludicrous in my opinion. You would need some serious tech savvy to understand how to dig around the source code of a website, something which many members of the public, let alone a handful of journalists, do not possess. I doubt any legal action will come to much, unless impersonating an elected official is given extra weighting by the law?
Julia, straight to the point, as ever.
The key thing that this shows is not just how easily some of the major papers are fooled (at least the ‘Guardian’ and ‘Indy’ had the grace to leave their stories up with an addendum – the BBC stealth edited their reference, though not before Plato got a quick screengrab).
It shows how badly most of the left-wing bloggers (LibCon in particular) want to believe in something that bashes a rival, and so not only swallow the line hook and sinker, but whine and pout when the gag is revealed.
The urge to scramble aboard the Baltimore Bandwagon is particularly galling from a bunch that were all but wrapping themselves in the flag and singing ‘Rule Britannia’ last week over the news that the US were dissing the NHS!
A commenter at Guido’s had the best word for them – Baltimorons!
“You would need some serious tech savvy to understand how to dig around the source code of a website…”
Not really. Most browsers will display it for you at the click of a menu option.
Understanding it is a bit more involved, but then, don’t major newspapers have people to do this for them?
Had this been a Conservative PPC, AH would have been screaming for their resignation. Sounds reasonable to me. The man is a deluded and egotistical cretin, at least based on this “jape”. How old is he?
“It was just a joke”: the traditional, pathetic excuse when caught out.
I wish I had enough time to register a domain name, set up an entire website and write a fake press release just for ‘a joke’.
I sent this yesterday to the chairman of the PLP:
Dear Mr Lloyd,
I am writing to express my concern at the unacceptable and repeated smearing of political opponents by Alex Hilton which does nothing other than damage the Labour Party. Following so closely on the heels of what I think we all accept to be the completely unacceptable behaviour of Messrs McBride and Draper, this brings further shame upon the Labour Party,
His attempts to embarrass Grayling, not just in this country but also in the US where we currently have strained relationships, in what was at best a very distasteful joke clearly show the man lacks the moral fibre and political judgment to represent the party as candidate for Chelsea and Fulham. Grayling was on the ropes and wide open to fall victim of honest opposition, now for no reason other than to perpetuate a childish joke Mr Hilton has put the Labour Party on the back foot.
More concerning to me is the lack of any apparent discipline from the party leadership. I am sure that I do not need to remind you that this man falsely reported Margaret Thatcher’s death. The Baltimore Mayor is investigating legal action and Mr Hilton has failed to offer any apology. Laughing it off as a joke. I find it incredible that he remains an approved candidate and ask that you advise what if any measures are being taken to ensure such behaviour by prospective Labour MPs is stopped.
I would also like to know what action if any the Labour Party intends to take against Mr Hilton. At a time of war we need statesmen not clowns entering parliament.
@Ollie Cromwell –
Nicely put and well done Ollie! You an Oldleftie?
A “surreal mood”, eh? You think that setting up a quick smear campaign is acceptable because you were in a “surreal mood”? Wow, why didn’t McBride use the same excuse?! He could have saved himself a lot of trouble if people had only understood that he was in a “surreal mood”.
A quite bizarre defence really. Or TTP.
Humour fail.
It was funny and it highlights that our media do little more than regurgitate credible seeming press releases without doing any actual journalism. They didn’t check that the site was real. They didn’t even look at the source code where Hilton clearly said ‘this is a spoof’. They didn’t ring the Baltimore mayor’s office to do any follow up questions.
Instead they took a spoof site at face value and, in this febrile silly season atmosphere at the fag-end of a dying government, ran with it.
So rather than the story being about Grayling, who should pehaps have watched seasons 2, 3 and 4 of the Wire before endorsing it’s realism or comparing things to it, the story has become about how our gullible, lazy, credulous media actually do bugger all work to ensure their stories are accurate…
In this regard, Hilton has clearly done the tories a favour.
Julia and Shaun, I’m surprised that you both think digging around source code is an obvious thing to do. It might be to us, but I very much doubt other people would even know what source code was when looking at a website. Admittedly these journalists should have made some phonecalls or other enquiries, but this was still an extremely lame “joke”.
James, bizarre indeed.
Ollie, you would have thought that after getting caught once being a complete idiot, he’d try really hard not to anger the media or other bloggers again. Maybe he’s just a bit too much of an attention seeker to stay away from controversy for too long.
CF, perhaps as a Labour PPC he realises that campaigning just isn’t worth his time anymore?
OR, agreed. A Conservative PPC would be harrassed endlessly by the BBC until they gave in, yet a Labour PPC gets away with it.
For the elimination of doubt: here is just one visitor who – should I be ashamed to say it? – wouldn’t know a source code if got up and bit him on the arse.
LFAT,
I guess that rather depends on what you expect from journalists; if you expect them to report people’s factual statements then you expect then to *validate* the statements *purportedly* from that individual.
For example, if I said on a website that Gordon Brown and Nick Griffin had, together, said ‘death to nigg*rs’, you’d want to check the validity of that, yes? You’d go to their office, yes? Or you’d look for audio/video recordings and or eyewitnesses, yes?
That’s called ‘confirming your sources’. Even, with the exception of Cheney’s operation, the intelligence agencies want things ‘dual sourced’ before reporting them as credible.
The fact here is that lots of prominent media organisations who claim to be ‘accurate’ and ‘responsible’ have proven themselves to be nothing of the sort by reporting a spoof website, declare such in the code – just one click away for the inquisitive – as tho it were unimpeachable truth. That’s idiotic and by far a bigger wrong than Hilton flagging the spoof ‘insufficiently’. FFS, even the URL was suspicious!
{blockquote]
@oldrightie – God no, wash your mouth out with a Gordon Brown soap on a rope. I am as blue as a Larry Flint film.
I understand why you got the impression, the wording was designed to get Mr Lloyd’s attention
@oldrightie –
Hee, hee, Ollie, you are of the correct Tartan, great!!!
Lighten up LFAT,
This story merely highlights the inability of the Labour supporting media to take the trouble to distinguish truth from fiction before broadcasting it. If its bad news about the Conservatives, publish and be damned.
It only took one phone call to the real Mayor of Baltimore to test the truth but, even this modest research was beyond the Labour luvvies in the power ranks of the Guardian and the BBC. Is it any wonder that most people in search of truth and independent analysis avoid both of these “reporters of news” like the plague.
For me this spoof just reinforced what many people are already doing, read the papers by all means, then check the accuracy of everything by trawling the blogosphere; Truth wiil be disseminated from fiction and political spin here.
>Julia and Shaun, I’m surprised that you both think digging around source code is an obvious thing to do. It might be to us, but I very much doubt other people would even know what source code was when looking at a website.
I’d put “look at the source code once you have a suspicion about a web page” into the first morning of any course about online journalism. This was clearly questionable (spelling, video etc), but still no one (except Sky?) phoned the Mayor’s Office.
I think it points up a serious question about professionalism of UK journalism compared to the USA. That half a dozen “professional” sites did it one after the other just highlights the flock-of-sheep nature of our media where breaking news is concerned. Add in that the Indy follow up hatchet job that tried to make AH the next Draper/Macbride made play with the “hidden messages” was written by a professional *historian*. A bit rich when he was actually one of Dolly’s victims.
Compare that to the Baltimore Sun – who had a decent excuse for getting the original story wrong since they were contacted by a public media professional who informed them about the “Mayor’s Twitter Page”, albeit a police department media liason guy.
Then when they were doing detailed research they contacted Alex H himself and at least two others in the UK, including tracing me back from an article on a media site that didn’t have my contact details on it (just a web link), and *then* spent half an hour on the phone asking me about the political landscape here and Alex H himself.
And all of that was for a mere blog post, rather than a piece for the main paper.
If I have to categorise this spoof site, I’d compare it to the Cameron-Hilton “I’m a candidate” picture at last year’s Tory Conference.
But of course the whole thing – including the Grayling “Wire” stuff – is totally silly-season.