News from Labour Matters

Blogger takes war of words with ’sockpuppet’ to his doorstep

A war of words between bloggers who have critically written about Evening Standard journalist Andrew Gilligan’s articles defending Boris Johnson, only to find “multiple false identities” used to praise his work, escalated further yesterday when the author of Bloggerheads took the accusations of ’sock puppetry’ to the Evening Standard’s doorstep.

“I dropped by Northcliffe House, home of Associated Newspapers (publishers of the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail, as well as the freesheets Metro and London Lite) and handed out roughly 180 copies of my own A4 freesheet Ailing Standards… most of them to Mr Gilligan’s colleagues as they entered the building,” explains Bloggerheads.

The leaflet says:
“In separate instances months apart, bloggers have detected multiple visits to their sites originating from searches for ‘andrew gilligan’ and resulting in anonymous comments about Andrew Gilligan. It now appears that these comments may have come from Andrew Gilligan, but those seeking confirmation of their own suspicions should beware; Andrew bites!

When it emerged that suspicious comments had also appeared on the Guardian’s ‘Comment Is Free’ (some of them containing specific phrases & claims that later appeared in articles by Gilligan), the journalist responded to the accusations of using multiple false identities (or ’sock-puppets’) to praise/defend his own work and undermine critics by launching an attack on his accusers in the Evening Standard…”
Learn more about Andrew Gilligan.

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