[Update 22 May 2022 – My Media World Limited and Director Muhammad Butt sued over this article in the High Court in a counterclaim in case QB-2020-003936. They dropped the libel case by discontinuance, after MHN editor Samuel Collingwood Smith entered a robust defence. The effect of discontinuance is they are automatically liable for Smith’s whole costs.]

In an episode of the Raw Report not so long ago, Sonia Poulton called this blog, “little read”. In some ways is fair comment, in relative terms MHN has a low circulation. At times, however, articles have had vast numbers of views and I have been surprised by the influence I have exercised. Even so, MHN is not my day job – it is a pastime that allows me to do some good but these days I have little time for. In recent years I have posted far less than once a week. Unlike myself, Sonia Poulton claims to be a professional journalist – so it is only fair to scrutinise the performance of her viewer figures.

The Raw Report with Sonia Poulton was launched in September 2020. Since then, it has failed to take off, with views as measured from replays trending down to around 3,000 views per video. Picture used for the purposes of criticism and review.

Every Friday, Sonia Poulton livestreams the Raw Report. Shortly afterwards, a replay of the full episode is posted. The viewing figures for each episode are published. This can give a rough idea of viewership and trends. There are obvious caveats of course. Most views of livestream archives usually occur around the time of an episode but views can occur indefinitely so older videos will generally have an advantage. The number of views of an archive is not the same as the number of live viewers. There was a gap in the series when Sonia’s brother died.

Even so, after 8 episodes and 3 months, 5 days after the most recent episode it had 3,090 views. On 8 November 2020 episode 4 (uploaded on 6 November) had 3012 views. So it is not a huge change. Furthermore, not every view represents a person and not every view represents a person who watched the episode to the end. On 8 November Poulton had 8,473 subscribers and today she has 9,375. That is an increase of under 250 a week. It is not insignificant but it is not going viral.

The significance of episode 4 is that in that episode, aside from criticising your author, Poulton referred to being employed and thanked the Director of My Media World (Muhammad Butt) who owns the Brand New Tube (BNT) platform she publishes on. MHN wonders whether they feel they are getting their money’s worth. Sonia Poulton’s largest channel on YouTube has 47.7K subscribers. Poulton has been publishing on BNT for about six months now and in that time she has brought around 20% of her YouTube viewership to BNT. At the current rate of increase of less than a thousand in 5 weeks, it could take over 7 years for Ms Poulton to match her YouTube view levels.

Furthermore, Poulton’s work is not without risk. There is good money to be made in many subjects. Years ago, after leaving university, your author briefly sold advertising for a gardening magazine. There is good money in making videos with computer game reviews, water gardening, holidays, cooking and a wide variety of subjects. Poulton however publishes extensively on the topic of paedophiles and furthermore, on the topic of wealthy or powers individuals alleged to be paedophiles.

Poulton is in fact being sued for libel by my friend John Hemming. I am also suing her at present. Her other works have by her own admission attracted libel threats from others even when she was working on her own behalf and had little money. Now she has an employer that could be liable for at least some of her work and Claimants have far more incentive to go after her.

Poulton’s approach to stories about Paedophilia is strident in the extreme. She recently stated on Twitter (archive) that staff at a school should have their hard drives checked on suspicion of paedophilia –

Sonia Poulton claims a school has admitted that, “it can’t stop staff from leching over young girls.”

Now, I am going to lay it out there. That purported admission Sonia quotes. That is not what you might call a verbatim quote. The school in question (which is not named for safety reasons) has not in fact issued a press release saying, “Notice to Media: We can’t stop our staff leching after young girls”. Sonia is in fact referring to her interpretation of a statement allegedly made by the school that female students should comply with the school dress code as they were wearing revealing clothes which were, “distracting”. In fact when I clicked on the link to the tweet she was quoting it was no longer available. It seems the story is disputed and the school denies it was said.

Furthermore, some of the girls concerned were very young but some in the group spoken to were 16 or over. If the story is true and 16 year old girls were wearing revealing clothes and this distracted teachers, that is unfortunate but not evidence of paedophilia. Furthermore, if teachers were in fact paedophiles then all they needed to do was … nothing … just let the students continue to wear inappropriately revealing clothes. Requiring the behaviour to stop seems to me more like appropriate behaviour.

Such wild allegations, of course, can incite violence or killings of entirely innocent people. Poulton’s work bristles with allegations of paedophilia, failing to deal with it, or covering it up, including regarding living politicians and multiple former Prime Ministers. For years she has escaped litigation, a woman of little substance flitting on the borders of being worth notice. Now, as an employee she at least may be more worthwhile suing. That is not to say of course that Poulton’s Twitter posts are automatically the responsibility of her employer, although they may be in murkier waters with her videos.

Of course, Sonia would say that on BNT alone she has a hundred times more subscribers than my insignificant 134. She would be right. However, this is not my day job. I have produced a handful of videos in the space of years. Each hit home and was shared by interested parties but it does not pay my bills. Sonia produces a video a week and she claims to be a professional journalist. Once, Sonia wrote for prestigious newspapers like the Mail and had millions, literally millions of readers. Now her most recent video got barely over 3,000 views.

There are lots of criticisms I would raise about Sonia’s format. In the still above she has visible ear wires. Her face looks strained and hectoring. Subjectively, I find her manner off-putting. I would review the image above as having professional, if ostentatious, onscreen graphics but slightly amateurish video. Sonia is adding a multiple of my circulation every week in subscribers but a few hundred a week will not amount to a drop in the ocean when BNT is trying to compete with YouTube, which, has billions of users.

I am not sure BNT are fully aware of the growing number of cold, predatory, lawyerly eyes turning their way at present. However, it only takes one case to put them to vast expense. A big risk for a relatively paltry number of viewers.

These allegations were put to BNT via her lawyer before publication. Ms Poulton has been recently bereaved but she returned to work last Friday. The Claimant gave until 10am today for a response and in practice waited until noon. No response or denial has been received. No explanation has been given as to why the tweet referred to is still up when the one it is replying to has been taken down because the story is disputed.