Some of the attempts to dig up dirt on Byline, the crowdfunded journalism site that first published details of John Whittingdale’s private life, appear to have gone slightly awry.
First there was a Daily Mail claim that campaign group Hacked Off directly funded the organisation, which had to be clarified on Wednesday morning.
And then later in the day the Telegraph quietly amended a line about Byline’s backers written by Andrew Gilligan which talked about “Jae-woong Lee, a South Korean billionaire who is the father of the site’s founder, Seung-yoon Lee”.
The problem was that, as Jae-woong Lee and Seung-yoon Lee pointed out on Twitter, they are not father and son.
@Telegraph, Im not a billionaire's son. Its a true feat of journalism to argue that I'm @soventure's son because of the same last name "Lee"
— Seung-yoon Lee (@bylineSY) April 17, 2016
What could have led the Telegraph to this conclusion? Surely it wasn’t the surname the two Koreans share, along with well over 6 million of their compatriots?
We have more than 6.7 million people with last name 'Lee' in South Korea alone... What are they thinking? https://t.co/65UnS2AL98
— 이재웅 (Jaewoong Lee) (@soventure) April 17, 2016
Monkey has asked the Telegraph how it came to the conclusion that the two Lees must be related, but is yet to receive a response.
