For those unfamiliar with the term, sockpuppeting means creating a “fake online identity” to praise yourself or some other entity with which you are associated, without disclosing the connection. In its most embarrassing form, it might involve a journalist leaving a comment on a blog in which he defends himself in the third person in an attempt to create the impression that the comment originates from an unconnected third party.

This interested me, as Gilligan has occasionally commented at Words Dept. when he’s been mentioned, although always under his real name.

The evidence suggests Gilligan has been repeatedly leaving comments under the presumably ironic name ”kennite”, including one on a Guardian blog post by Polly Toynbee last year, which attacked “jester, toff, self-absorbed sociopath and serial liar” Boris Johnson and described Gilligan as “rightwing”. On that occasion, “kennite” wrote:

If Polly had ever read any of Gilligan’s columns, she would see someone writing from a broadly left-wing, if anti-New Labour, perspective.

Pfft!

Adrian Monck and others have also raised the issue of Gilligan allegedly posting comments using a pseudonym, making him a possible “repeat sockpuppet offender”. Anyway, Gilligan claims “kennite” is his “partner” and that there is nothing wrong with this person bigging him up across the web without revealing the connection. A healthy debate is being had in Hill’s post’s comments section.

I’ve spent the last hour reading his original claims in the Standard, numerous subsequent counter-claims and various blogs on the subject and it’s all rather complicated.

Essentially, the key element of Gilligan’s latest investigation is that Lee Jasper, adviser to London Mayor Ken Livingstone, intervened improperly in the awarding of contracts to an organisation called Diversity International, run by Jasper’s “friend”, Joel O’Loughlin. Gilligan claims Jasper wanted to pay DI a £250,000 grant and then acted to have sacked two London Development Agency staff who objected to the deal.

That’s the basic gist of it, anyway. The fact that the story can’t be summed up easily in one sentence is a possible early indicator as to its inherent shortcomings. Doubt has also been cast on the story’s assuredness by the fact that Livingstone has made clear that he senses a vendetta. His office has issued a series of press releases containing vehement denials.

On the other hand, Livingstone’s position isn’t helped by the fact that he has, since Thursday, been denying something that Gilligan claims was never alleged. While the Mayor’s office proclaims the £250,000 payment wasn’t made, Gilligan says he never alleged the payments were made, merely that the LDA “agreed” to them. Gilligan is thus able to accuse Livingstone of distraction tactics and an attempt to blur the issue.

(If you read the text of Gilligan’s piece on this subject, it’s true, he doesn’t allege that the payment was finally made. But it’s worded trickily. If, in the third paragraph of a news story, you say someone “agreed to pay” someone else £250,000, it’s natural enough that the meaning most readers would take from that is that the cash changed hands.)

Livingstone also makes a fool of himself by demanding that Gilligan be sacked in a blog post on Comment is Free. Politicians demanding the sacking of a member of the media is in no way acceptable. It has a whiff of Putin’s Russia about it.

But the Mayor’s case is boosted by the quoting of an e-mail from Jasper, which shows that although Gilligan’s central claim is that Jasper was in favour of the £250,000 payment, in fact Jasper expressed “very serious doubts” about it. Livingstone claims this revelation “demolishes” Gilligan’s story.

Roy Greenslade waded into the controversy on Thursday. In attempting to predict the spat’s outcome, he found himself on the end of a tongue lashing from Gilligan, who posted several times on Greenslade’s blog to methodically argue his case. (He did the same on Words Dept. earlier this year when I dared suggest “his” story about donations to Manchester Labour Party from a local property developer might not be that fresh.)

So, what to make of it all? While I think Gilligan might be on to something vaguely bad about issues of croneyism and the often wasteful use of cash by public quangos in general, he has failed to serve up the killer piece of evidence as regards Jasper and the LDA. As a result, Livingston and his minions have been able to hit back, casting doubt on Gilligan’s “dirty” tactics, his reputation and his motives. And while the Mayor’s own rebuttal is flawed, there are some salient points that seem to undermine Gilligan’s allegations.

I have sympathy with Gilligan because he is dealing with a very complex paper trail and is having to defend himself against a highly accomplished politician with immense media management resources at his disposal. But the bottom line is that the facts don’t fully stand up. They might stand up 90% or 95% but unless you’re working at 100%, someone like Livingstone – or, gulp, Alastair Campbell – will have your balls for dessert.

It’s a shame because while my gut reaction is to side with journalists working to expose corruption and wrong-doing by government, with this one I just can’t. I really just can’t.

The Independent on Sunday has a take on the row here.

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Glad to see the thing about the Dispatches programme is still attracting interest. The Liberal Democrat Voice says this blog hosts an “interesting online discussion” about the programme (ha!), while David Ottewell of the Manchester Evening News says he broke Andrew Gilligan’s “reheated” story on page 2 of the MEN on 2 September 2004.

On his own blog, Ottewell says he won’t be following up Gilligan’s claims because the story “hasn’t actually moved on since I first broke it” but suggests journalists are under no obligation to label older stories as old, reasoning that “to draw attention to that fact would be unnecessary and foolish”.

Problem is, the story is best part of three years old, as this BBC News report shows. There was no mention that the story had been widely reported several years ago. In fact, anyone surfing Google could have uncovered it in less than three seconds.

I’m tempted to observe that the story was a little bit sexed up. But that would be a cheap shot at Gilligan’s expense. So I won’t.

Note: This post has been edited. Someone claiming to be Andrew Gilligan has been in touch saying the piece wasn’t presented as an “exclusive” (see comments). I’m happy to reword my post to reflect that and to clarify what I actually meant, which is that my overall impression from the tone of the story was that it was new, when in fact it wasn’t, and it added nothing at all to what was widely reported almost three years ago.

In fact, Gilligan’s voiceover in relation to the segment on the donation by Ask contains the phrase “We took our findings to Tony Travers,” a professor at LSE. To me, the use of the phrase “our findings” seems to suggest that a story has been uncovered for the first time, rather than recycled.

The programme can be viewed at onthebox.com.