Tom Newton Dunn

Thomas Zoltan Newton Dunn[1] (born 16 December 1973), known as Tom Newton Dunn, is an English broadcast journalist and former newspaper journalist. He presented First Edition, an evening news programme on talkTV.[2]

For other people named Thomas Dunn, see Thomas Dunn (disambiguation).

Tom Newton Dunn
Born
Thomas Zoltan Newton Dunn

(1973-12-16) 16 December 1973
St Pancras, London, England
EducationMarlborough College
Alma materUniversity of Edinburgh
OccupationJournalist
Years active1996–present
EmployertalkTV
Spouse
Dominie Moss
​
(m. 2004)​
Children2
Parents

He was the political editor of The Sun from 2009 to 2020, having previously worked for ten years as a defence journalist and foreign reporter. In 2020 he became chief political commentator at Times Radio, before stepping down to join talkTV.

Prior to joining Times Radio, Newton Dunn regularly appeared on the BBC and Sky News, and was one of the hosts of BBC Radio 4's Week in Westminster. He also appeared on the former What the Papers Say.

Early life and family

Newton Dunn was born in St Pancras, London, to Bill Newton Dunn, a Conservative and later Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament, and his Hungarian-born wife Anna Arki.

He was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire[3] and the University of Edinburgh, receiving an MA Honours degree in English Literature.

Between 2005 and 2014, his mother ran the European Movement Speaker Service, which provided "Pro Europe speakers for educational establishments and civic societies to debate all aspects of Britain's membership of the EU".[4] His father, who was a strong supporter of the UK adopting the Euro currency, defected from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats in 2000 due to the Conservatives' Euroscepticism.[5]

Career

Newton Dunn joined The Daily Telegraph as a diary reporter for the Peterborough column in 1996, moving to the Daily Mirror to join its graduate trainee scheme the following year. He spent several years (1999–2001) with the Mirror as a news reporter, before being made the paper's defence correspondent after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and covering the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.

In 2004, he moved to The Sun as the paper's defence editor. He was promoted to the role of political editor there in 2009, although it was intended for him to remain involved in the title's defence coverage.[6] During his time at The Sun, he was a broadcast commentator on politics, appearing on BBC Two's Sunday Politics programme, and occasionally hosting BBC Radio 4's The Week in Westminster. Newton Dunn has also been a panellist on Any Questions?, and reviewed the papers on Sky News. Before the programme's demise he sometimes hosted What the Papers Say.

It is reported that in 2017 when because of her mobility problems the Queen decided to watch the Remembrance Day ceremony from the balcony of the FCO, that Newton Dunn tweeted that “it is the duty of the Queen to attend even if she has to crawl there.” After being rebuked by Sir Alan Duncan, the tweet was deleted.[7]

Newton Dunn left The Sun to become a presenter and chief political commentator at the newly-formed Times Radio in summer 2020. He was replaced as political editor by Harry Cole.[8] In March 2021 Newton Dunn briefly wrote a weekly political column for the Evening Standard in the slot left vacant by the departure of editor-in-chief George Osborne.[9]

He moved to talkTV ahead of its launch, presenting an hour-long weekday news update called The News Desk .[10][11] The programme was switched from its original 7pm timeslot to 10pm and renamed First Edition after only reaching small audiences.[12][13] He secured the first interview with former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng following the collapse of Liz Truss' government.[14]

Awards

Newton Dunn won the Scoop of the Year award at the 2008 British Press Awards for revealing the cockpit tapes behind the Matty Hull friendly fire incident.[15] He also won Scoop of the Year for the Matty Hull friendly fire incident story at the 2007 What The Papers Say Awards.[16]

In 2015, he won the Politics Journalism award at the annual British Journalism Awards[17] for revealing the Plebgate scandal, which was successfully defended from a libel suit brought by Conservative MP and former Government Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell. He was threatened with arrest by the police if he didn't reveal his sources for Plebgate and did not do so.[18][19]

Far-right conspiracy incident

In December 2019, Newton Dunn wrote an article for The Sun titled "'HIJACKED LABOUR'", in which he reported that former British intelligence officers had produced a chart alleging that "Jeremy Corbyn is at the centre of an extraordinary network of hard-left extremists".[20][21][22] It later emerged that the ultimate sources for these claims included the antisemitic, far-right websites Aryan Unity and the Millennium Report, the latter described by Vice as "an antisemitic conspiracy site known for publishing articles with titles like, 'The Jewish Hand in World Wars'".[23][24][25] The 'HIJACKED LABOUR' thesis was described as a "far-right conspiracy theory" by Daniel Trilling in The Guardian.[24] The left-wing magazines Tribune and Jacobin argued that such articles were a danger to journalists and those on the political left, with Jacobin calling the chart a "hit list".[25][26] Newton Dunn's article was deleted on the same day of its publication, without comment from him or his newspaper.[24][23] The Independent Press Standards Organisation subsequently confirmed to The Guardian that it had received a complaint concerning the piece, and Peter Geoghegan of openDemocracy expressed his strong concern at his organisation being named as part of this alleged network.[27] In February 2020, IPSO responded to the complaint and "decided that it [did] not raise a possible breach of the Editors' Code".[28]

Publications

Newton Dunn has ghost-written two non-fiction books by military veterans:

  • Sniper One (2006) by Sgt. Dan Mills – ISBN 978-0141029016
  • Apache (2008) by Ed Macy – ISBN 978-0007288175

References
  1. "Find My Past". Search.findmypast.co.uk. Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
  2. "TalkTV's Tom Newton Dunn: 'We're not right wing, we are going to surprise'". Press Gazette. 25 April 2022. Archived from the original on 4 June 2022. Retrieved 1 June 2022.
  3. Millett, Tony (19 July 2013). "Summer school question time: after Mandela, after that royal birth – and the costs of old age". Marlborough News. Archived from the original on 11 November 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  4. "Anna Newton-Dunn - United Kingdom | Professional Profile | LinkedIn". uk.linkedin.com. Archived from the original on 13 February 2020. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  5. "UK news in brief". The Guardian. 25 September 2000. Archived from the original on 12 August 2017. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
  6. Tryhorn, Chris (15 October 2009). "Sun political editor George Pascoe-Watson to join Tim Allan's PR agency". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
  7. Alan, Duncan (2022). The Private Diaries of a Minister (2nd ed.). London: William Collins. pp. 237–8. ISBN 978-0-00-842229-5.
  8. Tobitt, Charlotte (14 May 2020). "Harry Cole named new Sun political editor as Tom Newton Dunn leaves for Times Radio". Press Gazette. Archived from the original on 17 May 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  9. Tom Newton Dunn [@tnewtondunn] (29 March 2021). "Huge shoes to fill, but I'm thrilled to be writing a political column for the @EveningStandard every Wednesday" (Tweet). Retrieved 30 March 2021 – via Twitter.
  10. "Piers Morgan ratings dive as talkTV struggles to attract viewers". the Guardian. 4 May 2022. Archived from the original on 1 June 2022. Retrieved 1 June 2022.
  11. Woods, Ben (31 July 2022). "Murdoch battle for viewers with GB News triggers bidding war". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 August 2022. Retrieved 9 August 2022. TalkTV's The News Desk with Tom Newton Dunn attracted average audiences of 2,500
  12. "The floundering of GB News and Talk TV reveals a dark truth about the mainstream media | Nesrine Malik". the Guardian. 16 October 2022. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  13. TVZone (23 September 2022). "TALK TV UNVEIL NEW WEEKDAY SCHEDULE". TVZoneUK. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  14. "I found out Liz Truss had sacked me on Twitter, ex-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng reveals". Sky News. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  15. "British Press Awards 2008 - winners". The Guardian. 9 April 2008. Archived from the original on 22 December 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  16. "What the Papers Say Awards: Full list of winners". The Guardian. 21 December 2007. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
  17. "Jonathan Calvert of Sunday Times is Journalist of the Year: British Journalism Awards full list of winners". Press Gazette. London. 2 December 2015. Archived from the original on 11 November 2017. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
  18. Kakar, Arun (23 January 2018). "Tom Newton Dunn: 'You've got to protect your sources and go to some lengths to do that'". Press Gazette. Archived from the original on 20 December 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  19. Blanchard, Paul (18 January 2018). "Tom Newton Dunn: Political Editor, The Sun". Media Masters. Archived from the original on 20 December 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  20. Newton Dunn, Tom (7 December 2019). "'HIJACKED LABOUR' Ex-British intelligence officers say Jeremy Corbyn is at the centre of a hard-left extremist network". The Sun. Archived from the original on 7 December 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  21. Dyer, Henry (20 December 2019). "Mysterious "tnewtondunn" attempts to wipe controversy from Sun political editor's Wikipedia page". Scram. Archived from the original on 20 December 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  22. Butler, James (27 January 2020). "What Happened?". London Review of Books. 42 (3). Archived from the original on 29 January 2020. Retrieved 30 January 2020. Tom Newton Dunn, published a map of 'Corbyn's hard-left extremist network', linking the IRA, Channel 4 journalists, radicalised junior doctors and Jacques Derrida. The piece was silently disappeared shortly after it emerged that it had been sourced from white supremacist and neo-Nazi websites.
  23. Rickett, Oscar (9 December 2019). "A History of Labour as a 'Terrifying National Threat'". Vice. Archived from the original on 20 December 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  24. Trilling, Daniel (9 December 2019). "Why did the Sun publish a far-right conspiracy theory?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 13 December 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  25. Finn, Daniel (9 December 2019). "The Sun is Going to Get People Killed". Tribune. Archived from the original on 20 December 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  26. Foster, Dawn (11 December 2019). "Something Frightening Is Happening in British Politics". Jacobin. Archived from the original on 20 December 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  27. Waterson, Jim (9 December 2019). "Mail on Sunday made false claims about Labour's tax plans". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 13 December 2019. Retrieved 21 December 2019.
  28. "IPSO complaint rejected" (Press release). News UK. February 2020. Archived from the original on 13 January 2022. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
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