Dan Wootton

Daniel John William Wootton (born 2 March 1983) is a New Zealand and British journalist and broadcaster.

Daniel John William Wootton was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1983 to British parents; his mother was born in Basildon, Essex and his father was born on a British army base in Malta.

Wootton grew up in Lower Hutt, and attended Naenae College and Victoria University of Wellington, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in media studies and political science.

Wootton started his career as a journalist in his New Zealand, writing an entertainment column for the Wellington-based broadsheet newspaper The Dominion Post and reporting for the daily television show Good Morning.

He immigrated to the United Kingdom when he was 21 and, after a period working for trade magazines, joined Broadcast magazine.

In 2007, he joined the News of the World.

Wootton joined the News of the World TV team in February 2007, becoming TV editor in November 2007, and show-business editor from November 2008 until its closure in July 2011; he then became a columnist and feature writer for the Daily Mail and editor-at-large for Now magazine.

He was named 'Showbiz reporter of the year' at the 2010, 2013 and 2018 British Press Awards.

Wootton also made appearances as a showbiz reporter on ITV's morning show Lorraine between 2011 and 2019, and was a guest on BBC Radio 5 Live.

He later testified to the Leveson Inquiry in 2012 about the News International phone hacking scandal, denying illegally publishing stories collected through phone hacking while an editor at the News of the World.

In 2013, he joined The Sun on Sunday and became editor of the Bizarre column the following year.

In 2013, Wootton joined The Sun newspaper, launching a new column on Sundays.

He became editor of the newspaper's Bizarre column in 2014, and was promoted to associate editor (showbiz and TV) in 2016.

From 2015 to 2018, he was also a regular contributor and panelist on Big Brother's Bit on the Side.

In 2021 Wootton left News UK to join the MailOnline as a columnist and present a show, four days a week, on GB News.

Wootton was suspended from GB News in September 2023 following an incident in which sexual comments were made on his show by guest Laurence Fox about journalist Ava Evans, which were described by the channel as "totally unacceptable".

Wootton apologised and said that he should have intervened.

His contract with MailOnline was subsequently terminated and Ofcom opened an investigation into the incident, which concluded that the show breached their broadcasting rules.

Wootton announced his departure from GB News on Twitter, a day after Ofcom's report was released on 4 March 2024.

In 2015, Wootton and The Sun received widespread criticism for an article he wrote for the newspaper entitled "Hollywood HIV Panic".

HIV policy adviser Lisa Power called it "vile" and expressed disappointment that Wootton had "lent his name to such a shameful piece", saying that it reinforced stigma against people with HIV.

British HIV charity the Terrence Higgins Trust called it "irresponsible", while The BMJ, a peer-reviewed medical journal also criticised the article.

In February 2016, he joined The Sun, under the editorship of Victoria Newton, as associate editor and in March 2018 progressed to executive editor.

Wootton has made appearances as a show business presenter on the ITV Breakfast shows Lorraine and Daybreak.

Wootton hosted a weekly talkRADIO show called Dan's Dilemmas from March 2018 and, in February 2020, took over the station's drivetime show, replacing Eamonn Holmes.

The action related to an article published in 2018 in The Sun describing Depp as a "wife beater".

Wootton has been credited with breaking the story about Megxit in The Sun on 8 January 2020, which prompted Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to announce within hours their plans for stepping back from their royal duties.

Wootton stated that he had been in contact with the couple's spokesperson on 28 December and gave them ten days' notice before the story broke, despite facing pressure from royal officials not to run the piece.

Sources close to the couple later told The New York Times that they "felt forced to disclose their plans prematurely" as they learned about The Sun's intentions to publish the story.

Wootton disputed the claim as "They released the statement after we had published the story and had so much notice."

In June 2020, it was reported that Harry's lawyers had issued a 'letter before action', threatening to sue Dan Wootton and The Sun, based on allegations that they had paid money to associates of palace officials to secure their stories.

Wootton's lawyers denied that any payments were made unlawfully to a public official or a proxy and described the claims as "a smear campaign by unknown bad actors."

Prince Harry later said that he believed Wootton was able to publish storis due to "the strength of his secret relationship with one particularly close friend of [Prince William's] comms secretary – who fed him trivial (and mostly fake) gossip."

In July 2020, libel proceedings brought by Johnny Depp against Wootton and News Group Newspapers began in the High Court of Justice in the case of Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd.

On 2 November 2020, the court ruled in favour of News Group.

Mr Justice Nicol found that assaults were proven to the civil standard in 12 of the 14 incidents reported by Amber Heard, and he concluded that The Sun article was substantially accurate on the balance of probabilities.

In 2022, Depp sued Heard in a separate defamation trial in the United States.

This case had a different outcome, with the jury finding that Depp had proven all the elements of defamation, including that the statements were false, and that Heard defamed Depp with actual malice.

In October 2020, Labour MP Chris Bryant criticised Wootton for being "a dangerous conspiracy theorist" after Wootton advocated for the Great Barrington Declaration and suggested that herd immunity could be a solution for COVID-19.

In January 2021, Wootton announced that he would leave The Sun and talkRADIO to become a columnist for MailOnline and present a daily show, four days a week, on GB News.