Tom Newton Done.

One of Murdoch's most reliable puppets finally gets his strings cut after 19 years and countless chances to mend his ways...

Previously — The Sun’s killer obit: Fleet Street’s most hypocritical paper spins its former chief reporter’s ‘legendary’ career

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In 2014, The Sun’s former Whitehall editor Clodagh Hartley was found not guilty of making unlawful payments to public officials by a jury at the Old Bailey. During the trial, she testified there was a poisonous atmosphere within the paper’s Westminster team and that was driven by a senior colleague — The Sun’s then-political editor, Tom ‘Olivia’ Newton-Dunn — who bullied her and stole credit for her work. She said that he “had succeeded in stealing contacts” from her, while his “bullying” and constant demands for exclusive stories forced her to take time off with stress.

James Doleman — a court and politics reporter who is a Byline Times contributor as I am — wrote back in 2021 about Newton-Dunn and the Hartley case:

[Clodagh Hartley] told the court she was being put under extreme pressure from her immediate boss, Mr Newton-Dunn, to get scoops or she would be fired. She also testified that she had lodged an official complaint against Mr Newton-Dunn for bullying and harassment. 

The judge in the case ruled that the media could not name [Newton-Dunn] as there was still the prospect he could end up being prosecuted himself, and any reporting could prejudice a future trial. So we just referred to him as “a senior reporter,” during the case. 

Anyway, the jury went out, returned with a not-guilty verdict and that seemed to be that. However, just then [Newton-Dunn’s] barrister came striding into court. He demanded of the judge that the media be made to report that his client had been cleared by the inquiry.

The judge, Mr Justice Saunders, gently replied that he had already passed an order that [Newton-Dunn] should not be named, and nobody from the media had even asked for that to be lifted (mainly because it wasn't that important to the story anyway) But the barrister forcefully insisted.

Mr Saunders said he couldn't tell the press what to publish, but he wouldn't keep the order in place if the subject demanded it be removed. So he removed it.

Being a public-spirited reporter, I then tweeted out that the "senior reporter," who allegedly bullied Ms Hartley was [Newton-Dunn], but he had been cleared by an internal inquiry. Then, it being Friday, I went to the pub with a few colleagues.

Half an hour or so my phone rang, and it was [Newton-Dunn] (Not sure how he got my number) He was enraged, threatening me with all sorts of dire consequences for my actions and that he was consulting his lawyers.

I slightly lost my temper back and told him "Ask your own barrister what happened in court today," and hung up. Never heard from him again.

… I thought then, and subsequent events have only reinforced my opinion, that Mr Newton-Dunn has no real regard for the truth.

In October 2019, appearing on BBC Politics Live, Newton-Dunn responded to a scoop from James Doleman about Boris Johnson’s court submission on Brexit by sneering:

Slight health warning on that tweet: I know the chap who tweeted it; he’s not a completely bonafide recognised journalist working for a national newspaper organisation…

… and poo-poohing the story; Doleman was subsequently proved correct.

Clodagh Hartley did not return to work at The Sun after the trial. Tom Newton-Dunn continued his slippery ascent through the company.

The 'straight' guy

In December 2019, during the general election campaign, Newton-Dunn’s byline was on a front page splash claiming that a group of ‘former’ British intelligence officers had uncovered “a hard-left extremist network” at the heart of the Labour Party.

Headlined HIJACKED LABOUR [archived link], the piece screamed that Jeremy Corbyn sat at the centre of “a spider’s web of extensive contacts” that stretched “from Marxist intellectuals to militant groups and illegal terror organisations”.

Newton-Dunn directed readers to a website featuring a network map which he said had been compiled by military veterans “in their spare time” to reveal “a party in the grip of a hardline cabal”. Each node on the network had a ‘fact file’ attached but on closer inspection, several entries drew on far-right sources, including the antisemitic conspiracy website Millennium Report and the website of Aryan Unity, a neo-Nazi group. Before the day was out, the story had been removed from The Sun’s website without acknowledgement or explanation. Newton-Dunn clammed up and The Sun pretended it had never happened. Job done.

For Jacobin, the late and dreadfully missed Dawn Foster, wrote:

Though the map was reported as a breaking news story, it had in fact been seen before: it was widely shared online earlier in the summer under the original name of “the traitors’ chart,” and its “fact files” included a link to what essentially amounted to a hit list for anti-leftists that was filled with antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia, linking and sourcing such extremist websites as “Aryan Unity.”

In The Guardian, Daniel Trilling concluded:

What is particularly worrying about the Sun’s publication of a toxic conspiracy theory is that the story was written by its political editor – a veteran journalist with years of experience as a defence correspondent who appears frequently on the BBC. It’s not good enough for the Sun to simply remove it – the paper needs to apologise, and to explain what it got wrong and why.

Nearly four years later, both apology and explanation remain missing in action. Newton-Dunn continued to be employed and richly rewarded by News UK for his loyal service. In 2020, he was ‘promoted’ out of The Sun — replaced as Political Editor there by Harry ‘Bunter’ Cole — joining Times Radio to compete for the title of Britain’s most inept radio presenter and serve as the station’s ‘chief political commentator’. He then moved in 2022 to Talk TV to present The News Desk, which was about as popular as anal fissures. The programme was shifted from 7 pm to 10 pm and renamed First Edition, distancing it from being a Newton-Dunn vehicle.

Then, in June 2023, reports that Newton-Dunn had been suspended for alleged “inappropriate behaviour” emerged. Complaints ranged from the most junior staff members to senior executives. The day before that news broke, First Edition’s producer left the show. The initial claim was that Newton-Dunn was out for two weeks; News UK Corporate Affairs scrambled to assure perpetually thirsty drink-driving enthusiast Paul Staines that he was merely “currently on leave”.

That leave stretched on until yesterday when an announcement that reeked of “legally agreed wording defined as part of a settlement agreement” was punted out by News UK; it said: …

Tom Newton Dunn is stepping down from presenting First Edition on TalkTV and will leave News UK after 19 years… 

… Tom has brought astute and authoritative reporting and commentary to every role he has held and we hope he will continue to contribute to News UK’s titles in the future.

‘Olivia’ himself added:

I’m very grateful to News UK for giving me so many opportunities with The Sun, the Times titles, and the move to broadcast. Helping to launch Times Radio and then a new TV channel 18 months ago has been a huge privilege. It feels now is the right time though for me to move on.

An incredible year in politics on both sides of the Atlantic is coming up and that has created a new opportunity, which I’m looking forward to. I also hope to keep contributing to News UK titles.

I’m going to take a well-needed break first and concentrate on recharging the batteries. It’s been a busy couple of decades. I look forward to the next challenge.

Press Gazette — rarely keen to upset News UK, which buys a lot of tables at its awards dos — commented mildly that:

[Newton-Dunn] initially hosted TalkTV‘s primetime news bulletin First Edition at 7 pm on weekdays before that moved to 10 pm six months in. However, he has been off-air, on leave for personal reasons, since June.

I suppose being personally repellent does technically count as “personal reasons”.

Usually, a ‘personal news’ tweet from someone in the British media provokes a circle jerk of congratulations/commiserations from other hacks but it’s a wasteland beneath Newton-Dunn’s message, other than a lonely like from Hugo Gye, the Political Editor at the i. It’s almost as if Neutron Bomb isn’t particularly beloved.

No doubt Newton-Dunn will return after a brief period of ‘reflection’ and he’ll be welcomed back by a British media that gives bad people endless chances. Let’s make sure no one forgets what he’s really like.

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