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Carole Malone and the burden of proof

The right wing tabloid hack used a GB News slot to repeat a notorious conspiracy theory about the Duchess of Sussex

Right wing tabloid hack Carole Malone. Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

When on November 18, the Guardian’s Pippa Crerar posted new details of the paper’s investigations into Nigel Farage’s boyhood racism – “he would sidle up to me and growl ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘gas them’, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas chambers”, a schoolmate said – the
right wing tabloid hack Carole Malone was outraged. “Would love to see or hear proof of this. Or don’t you care about that!” Malone wrote on social media.

The Geordie is a natural campaigner for truth and fair play, having worked for the News of the World at the time it was closed down in disgrace. She has since moved on to the equally trustworthy Daily Express and GB News.

It was on the latter on December 4 that Malone declared Meghan, Duchess of Sussex had been raised by her father Thomas Markle while her mother Doria Ragland was in prison. Challenged on this by a fellow guest, she blustered that it had happened “years ago… do you want me to give you the precise dates, because I haven’t got them?”

The lack of detail was unsurprising as Ragland has never been in jail. Malone had fallen for a notorious conspiracy theory popularised by far right nutjobs.

GB News quickly removed clips of this fake news from their social media feeds, but Ofcom have received several complaints and are likely to censure the channel once again. What a shame Carole did not have proof of what she said – or doesn’t she care about that?

Meanwhile, the embarrassment did not stop a typically nasty Malone column being published by the Express on December 6, headlined “Meghan
Markle is in deep trouble – one big fat lie could soon be exposed”.

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