the online article, but it was inserted into the newspaper article and Mr Newton Dunn
said he must have omitted the reference to Black Sabbath in the article which he
submitted. This means that the reference to Black Sabbath in the newspaper article
must have been inserted by a sub-editor. The sub-editor must either have seen some
reference to Mr Fraser’s response, or seen the Dream Troll image as tweeted by the
band with the hashtag Black Sabbath, or have worked out for himself or herself that it
was based on the Black Sabbath album cover. It is not possible to make a finding
between these possibilities because there was no evidence of the identity of the
subeditor for this story. This is because the electronic record relating to the
production of
the story appears to have been automatically deleted before a pre-action letter was
sent.
Publication of the online article and the newspaper article
47.
The article was published online as appears above. Analysis of the number of hits
was provided by Mr Tenwick, a digital analyst for News Group. There were 6514
unique hits on the article from around the world. There were also hits to the article
from Facebook and Twitter links. The total number of hits from any source was 8714
or 8093 (depending on which analytical programme was used). The total number of
unique hits from England and Wales was 7030. This is the relevant figure for my
purposes. Mr Burgon gave evidence to the effect that many members of the Labour
party got their news online and he did not know which persons of influence or opinion
formers had read the online article. Mr Newton Dunn gave evidence that many
politicians got their news online.
48.
The hard copy article was published the next day which was Saturday 15 April 2017
on page 22. As issues about causation of harm have been raised I have set out the
whole article below. The headline was “Rock Bank MP `Nazi’ Logo Rap”
“Labour’s justice chief faced scorn last night after it emerged he has joined a heavy
metal band that appears to use Nazi symbols in a poster.
Richard Burgon, 36, is singing with little-known rockers Dream Troll.
Their motto We Sold our Sold for Rock ‘n Troll uses S in a font similar to Hitler’s SS
logo.
It takes off Black Sabbath’s 1975 album We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n Roll which
has the same fonts.
They also have a German umlaut on the O in their name. Leeds East MP Mr Burgon
put a snap of him and the band on Facebook saying “Away from politics, music is my
main interest”. Tory MP Charlie Elphicke urged him to quit the band, saying “It
shows terrible misjudgment for Richard Burgon to associate himself with anyone who
appears to enjoy Nazi iconography”. Mr Burgon said: “I grew up with them. They
are ordinary decent blokes and there’s not a racist or Nazi bone in their bodies”.
[Between the two columns of the article there was a picture of Mr Burgon in a sweat
shirt and he was either singing or speaking. There was also a picture of the Dream