Newscord:
We can reveal that convicted sex offender Henry Hopwood-Phillips, who admitted to taking and distributing indecent photographs of a child, was in business with Dr Lola Salem. Both wrote for The Critic, and in 2022 they set up Konstantinopolis Ltd together.
Filings show he registered it as a publishing company on 17 January 2022, at St John's College, Oxford. He held three shares, she held one. In July, its address became "PO Box Lola Salem". By 2023 they held two each.
Dr Salem denies the charge and has pleaded not guilty. The Mail reports she will argue the images were sent unsolicited and that she reported them to police. The filings show they were far closer than two writers on one magazine.
The Daily Mail quietly changed its story, with no note to readers. At 2.14pm on 13 October it said she worked with him at The Critic. By 6.38pm that line said only that both wrote for it as freelance contributors. A subtle change to create distance between the two.
The Critic has not said a word about any of this. Two days after his court date, its online editor wrote that a "conspiracy of murmuring" over grooming gangs had betrayed British children. Quite a statement, given its own silence.
The Critic is a "news" outlet that loses about £1 million a year. Jeremy Hosking keeps it open: he is the only shareholder of its publisher, Locomotive 6960 Ltd, and has paid £6.4 million since 2020 to cover the losses.
The Critic is not the only thing Hosking pays for. He has given £8.6 million to political parties and campaigns since 2005, including £4.3 million to Laurence Fox's Reclaim Party and £1.7 million to the Brexit Party and Reform UK.
Dr Salem has written 27 pieces for The Critic. Many are about music and arts. The rest are culture war, and The Critic files them that way: it tagged her "Renewing culture for the Right" with "Culture Wars" and "Immigration".
In "The French disorder", she called the police killing of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk a "violent death" that "provoked riots", under the line "France needs more realism about its social decay". Her free-to-read paragraphs never say a police officer shot him.
Jeremy Hosking pays about £1 million a year for The Critic, which demands answers on grooming gangs but has said nothing about its own writer, who admitted taking indecent photographs of a child.
Read our investigation; every filing included:
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