The Impact You Paid For: Seven Byline Times Stories that Shaped the Last Seven Years
To mark Byline Times' 7th birthday, we share seven crucial stories – one from each year of our history – that shaped the national debate and put this independent newspaper on the map
In celebration of our seventh birthday, we wanted to share seven crucial stories – one from each year of Byline Times history – that shaped the national debate and put this independent newspaper on the map.
They are a reminder of what independent journalism can achieve when it’s backed by readers rather than powerful owners.
You paid for these stories, and we could only have published and publicised them and achieved the impact we have with your support.
2019: ‘Dodgy Money and Dirty Data’ – Democracy in Danger
Byline Times’ May 2019 edition – the second to print – led with a prescient story by Hardeep Matharu about the integrity of UK elections (or the Brexit referendum) in the aftermath of the historic and foreboding Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
It was the beginning of a new era in politics, where our personal data became the “new currency of our elections” – and new actors could pull voters’ strings in the dark.
“Cambridge Analytica may have shut up shop,” Matharu concluded. “But this is just the beginning, not the end, of the story of dark data in our elections. The country has no time to spare in getting to grips with this.” The country, of course, did not.
2020: Disaster Capitalism & Crony PPE Contracts
In early April 2020, just weeks into the first COVID lockdown, Nafeez Ahmed (now Byline Times’ Head of Investigations) revealed that a major Conservative party donor had profited handily from a lucrative COVID PPE contract. It was just the beginning.
In the months that would follow, Byline Times journalists would piece together how the Government’s ‘VIP Lane’ routed and fast-tracked emergency PPE contracts to politically connected insiders and donors. For quite some time, no other paper would cover it.
The National Audit Office confirmed six months later that the Government set up a parallel channel to prioritise leads from ministers, MPs and peers, and that normal checks were overwhelmed.
2021: ‘It’s Coming From the Top’ – The BBC’s Impartiality Crisis
Tackling a debate that would arise again and again, former BBC reporter Patrick Howse investigated the Corporation’s reluctance to cover a significant scandal involving then Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “Far from feeling that their job is to hold power to account,” he wrote, the BBC “see themselves as a mere conduit through which the (Government-driven) political discourse of Britain should flow.”
Later that year, Byline Times would spotlight BBC Board Member Robbie Gibb – who attempted to block appointments on “impartiality” grounds despite his own clear ideological connections. And in 2025, Byline Times would be on the frontline of the next round of the impartiality fight, highlighting the Corporations leaked bid to appease Reform UK voters and then defending the institution against a “right-wing coup”.
2022: ‘Musk’s Twitter Buy Makes No Sense – Unless It’s Part of Something Bigger’
In 2022, after Elon Musk made the fateful decision to buy Twitter and mould it into ‘X’, Dave Troy saw it clearly as part of a larger ideological project.
He suggested that Musk and his network of tech allies – some aligned with cryptocurrency movements and hostile to the dominance of the US dollar – could use control of a global information platform to reshape financial systems, weaken democratic institutions, and amplify narratives that align with authoritarian interests such as Vladimir Putin’s vision of Russia in a multipolar world order.
Years later, with the rise of crypto in politics and the release of the Epstein Files, Byline Times would uncover the broader right-wing crypto network reshaping politics at home and on the world stage.
2023: #MediaToo – GB News Star Dan Wootton Unmasked in Cash-for-Sexual Images Catfishing Scandal
Byline Times led the long-form #MediaToo investigation into Dan Wootton, then one of GB News’ most prominent presenters and a former senior Sun and executive. Multiple sources alleged he had used fake online identities to obtain intimate images from men by deception and solicit sexual material from junior colleagues.
As Wootton denied wrongdoing and framed the allegations as a political hit job, several major outlets removed their own reporting after receiving legal threats from his lawyers. Our reporting showed how powerful media figures can use privacy law and libel intimidation to suppress scrutiny.
Wootton threatened to sue Byline Times and crowdfunded legal action against us. We published the threats and continued reporting. Police opened inquiries following the investigation. Wootton later lost his MailOnline column and his role at GB News.
2024: The Far-Right Grooming of Survivors of Child Sexual Exploitation
The May 2024 edition of Byline Times led with Andrew Kersley’s five-month investigation uncovering how far-right groups offering ‘support’ to survivors of child sexual exploitation actually used them as weapons to amplify anti-Muslim hatred.
It was a seminal piece of work in a broader stream – an effort to clarify the distorted right-wing tendency to frame ‘grooming gangs’ as an issue isolated to one identity group – backed up by media sensationalism – all while doing nothing to support actual victims. It was an early sign of how the “protect our kids” cause became all about immigration – and would only grow more extreme in years to come.
2025: The Bannon-Epstein Axis
In November 2025, Byline Times was remarkably early in identifying the extent of the relationship between the former ‘MAGA’ guru Steve Bannon and the disgraced sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Nafeez Ahmed showed that Epstein helped shape Trump’s movement via the alliance, with Bannon promising it could “stave off” the cultural movement (#TimesUp) against sexual abuse in the workplace.
Their relationship – and Bannon’s European ventures with Farage and EU far-right populist parties – would demonstrate the hand Epstein and his network had in pulling the strings of our politics for decades, necessitating a complete re-evaluation of recent political history.
The Future of Journalism Is Reader-Owned
These seven stories are only a small snapshot of what Byline Times has tried to do over the past seven years: follow the evidence, challenge power, and investigate the systems shaping our politics and media.
But journalism like this does not happen by accident. It’s an extreme outlier. It requires independence from political pressure, from corporate interests, and from the billionaire ownership models that dominate much of the media landscape.
That’s why Byline Times was built differently: as a newspaper backed by its readers. As an independent force that can challenge the hegemony of the monopoly press, and perhaps – though we never imagined it initially – break into the mainstream. On our own terms.
If you are interested in purchasing shares, do contact us on info@bylinetimes.com.
That’s the mission behind Byline Times: to build a responsible, reader-backed newspaper fit for an era of instability, clickbait and AI-generated misinformation – one that follows the evidence wherever it leads.
You paid for these stories, and we could only have published and publicised them and achieved the impact we have with your support.