Fake claim cloned across hundreds of fake social media accounts. One real person identified says her account was hacked – but has family link with Tory Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who was at centre of fake news scandal yesterday
As the SKWAWKBOX has reported, the Tories have sunk to the level of two bot-driven fake news campaigns in order to try to discredit the story of little Jack Williment, the four-year-old boy who had to sleep on a hospital floor because it had no beds available under Tory underfunding.
Even though both the hospital and the local press have verified the story – with the hospital formally apologising to the family for little Jack’s ordeal – the Tories have used fake ‘bot’ accounts on social media to claim that the picture of Jack on the floor was staged and the story was fake.
But in potentially explosive news, the one real person whose account has been identified putting out the claim that the story was false – and whose screengrabbed post has been closely identified by commentators with the genesis of the fake claim – has a family connection with Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
Sheree Jenner-Hepburn’s Facebook post – shared 29,000 times on Facebook – has been described as the genesis of the message that was cloned, word for word, across many hundreds of fake accounts.
She has since claimed that her account was hacked and has reportedly admitted that she knows nobody at Leeds General Infirmary.
If so, the hackers appear to have hung around long enough to correspond with people who commented on the post, however – as a screenshot of the thread under the post, taken before she deleted her Facebook account, shows:
As well as being shared 29,000 times on Facebook, the exact wording of the message that appeared on Jenner-Hepburn’s account also appeared in tweets and Facebook posts put out by hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of fake ‘bot’ accounts – including misnaming the hospital as ‘Leeds Hospital’, which does not exist – as part of the coordinated Tory campaign to discredit the Jack Williment story.
She has now deleted her Facebook account, but her son’s Facebook account shows that he is ‘friends’ with Tory Health Secretary Matt Hancock:
Hancock was involved in yesterday’s fake-news attempt by the Tories, when they briefed journalists that his aide had been ‘punched in the face’ by a Labour activist when Hancock visited Leeds General Infirmary, after Boris Johnson was humiliated when he stole a journalist’s phone rather than look at a photograph of little Jack Williment on the hospital’s floor.
Sheree Jenner-Hepburn, who works as a PA for a private surgeon, has not replied to a request for comment. Matt Hancock’s office has not answered calls all afternoon.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here for a monthly donation via GoCardless. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to reblog this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Hancock has always appeared as a slippery spiv. You see it in his eyes every time he opens his mouth. Nastier than most!
Out shopping today I accidentally trod in something brown, stinking and slimy. Accidentally trod part of it into the cafe we were entering.
It turned out that it was our local tory mp out canvassing.
NOTHING the Tories could do would surprise me – the stench of despair hangs over them as they are driven to more and more desperate measures to try to turn the tide against us – but the wall to wall vilification of us and our leader is not working and I look forward to a Labour government being in place by the weekend.
All the posts look fake – only one thing I don’t quite get and that’s how being a ‘facebook friend’ implies family ties to Hancock.
Not disputing it, just thought ‘friending’ only took a click – and isn’t that necessary to read some items?
Haven’t I read something like “only X’s friends have access to this” or is that on a different platform?
There is something just not right about all thats going on,and its the belief that we have moved into new reality on our limping political system and we’ve moved from a dirty election to somthing far more sinister.We should win and do enough to gain a majority even with the Ashworth bombshell yesterday perfectly timed with military precision and a understanding of psychology that actually got under my skin.Whatever happens the effort put in by the whole party as matched the Labour landslide we saw in 97,and we were not up against the state and all of its black arts then.
I think that surely somthing must be seriously wrong in a society that allows propaganda on a industrial scale in a election campaign and ignores it.We have laws and we have enforcement,we cannot forgive or forget what as gone on in this election and bought and paid for by a Rogue Tory party bent on whats little more than a political coup against democracy and the state.
Back in ’92 and ’97 Tory Sleeze was pungent and malodorous.
This, though, is ACRID.
Boris Johnson’s desperation and incompetence reeks to high heaven. Even the 24/7 air freshening provided by the BBC and billionaire press cannot stop the putrid, rotten, rancid stink of tory decay and indifference from polluting our airways.
VOTE LABOUR on Dec 12 and open the window to a refreshing breeze, the wind of change.
‘Back in ’92 and ’97 Tory Sleeze was pungent and malodorous.’
1992, when Neil Kinnock was leader Yes, 1997, when Blair was leader, No.
In 1992, a few weeks before the GE was called, the Sunday Times did a hit-job on Neil Kinnock, with a front page headline ‘Kinnock’s Kremlin Connection’, with two more pages inside, and all of the right-wing papers steamed in with their ‘view’ on it – eg He’s not fit to be PM etc. Andrew Neil was the editor at the time. Needless to say, there was nothing whatsoever in the ST piece of blatant black propaganda to justify such a story.
I just did a search re >kinnock’s kremlin connection sunday times< and I can't find anything specific, but I found the following from 1995 regarding Michael Foot, which mentions the ST Kinnock 'article' in passing:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/spy-story-that-fails-the-credibility-test-1574005.html
I well remember the slating Harold Wilson got. He was not only a Russian agent but a corrupt businessman at the same time. And of course left wing which obviously made him a Stalinist. Go back to the 1951 election and you see exactly the same sort of smears against the Party and it’s leaders. In 1945 Churchill famously claimed a Labour government would set up a Gestapo like force to enforce a Socialist State. He was laughed at for such nonsense and was an early blow to his reputation as people remembered what an aggressive Rightwinger he was? It’s rather like today when the Jewish population apparently fear (according to their leaders) ‘’Camps’ for Jews who break ‘new laws’ about Jews. Except it’s no longer thought ridiculous!