Bartholomew's Notes

Following Jenvey’s confession last month, BBC Radio 5 Live’s Donal MacIntyre programme has interviewed Glen Jenvey about how he hoaxed the Sun in January into publishing a bogus story about a Muslim plot to attack British Jews. Jenvey also offers his apologies: Tom Mangold thinks he is “sad rather than bad”, having had a “ghastly” childhood and enjoying media attention. There’s also a wider general discussion with Nigel West and with Tom Miller of Spinwatch about the phenomenon of intelligence fantasists in general, and why the media and politicans like Patrick Mercer are so quick to fall for them.

Jenvey’s antics came to light because of Tim Ireland’s investigations at Bloggerheads. Bloggerheads does get a brief credit, but unfortunately there is nothing about how Tim uncovered the truth or about the campaign of abuse and harrassment he suffered in the months that followed. However, Jenvey has told me in an email that he wants people to know that he is also sorry for that.

Mangold’s report comes in the wake of an article published at Spinwatch about Jenvey and some of his associates. I’ve blogged on Jenvey numerous times, the first being in 2006 when he appeared on Newsnight as part of a story that relied on a group called the VIGIL Network.

By the way, the rest of the programme is also worth listening to. There’s a story about a remarkable woman who spends her time looking on social networking sites for evidence of thugs boasting about how they’ve got away with illegal acts; she carries on with her efforts despite facing threats and efforts to shut her down.  As she rightly says, the threats mean that they are afraid of her, rather than that she should be afraid of them. Indeed.

The programme should be online to listen to soon here.

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