About Just The Facts
Just The Facts is the next chapter of The Hodlines.
What began as a personal platform for my investigative journalism has evolved into something broader: an independent publication built around fact-checking, original investigations and evidence-led reporting.
The name has changed, but the purpose hasn’t.
I’m James Murray-Hodcroft. You may not know my name, but you may already be familiar with some of my work.
Born on a film set in 1980, I’ve spent much of my life around television, film and radio. But my route into journalism, and through life generally, hasn’t exactly been conventional.
As a teenager, I experienced homelessness and spent time sleeping rough. It is a relatively small part of a much longer story, but an important one. I know what it is like to experience the world from the other side of systems and institutions; to be the person without money, influence or an obvious voice, rather than the person writing about them.
I don’t believe that experience makes me a better journalist by default. But it has certainly influenced the kind of journalist I have become.
Storytelling has always been part of what I do, but journalism gave me something different: the opportunity to investigate stories that matter, challenge claims that don’t withstand scrutiny and uncover information that might otherwise remain hidden.
Since 2013, I have worked on investigations involving fraud, corruption, online safety, harassment and institutional failure. Some have contributed to national news coverage, parliamentary scrutiny and changes in the way organisations operate.
One of my earliest major investigations uncovered evidence relating to an estimated £120 million fraud involving one of the UK’s largest training companies. Material from the investigation was subsequently featured by FE Week and BBC Newsnight, and evidence relating to the company was considered during parliamentary scrutiny. The company was ultimately shut down and its director disqualified from running a company for five years.
Around the same period, I worked with BBC News on an investigation into a serious safeguarding vulnerability in one of the world’s largest online games. The platform’s direct-messaging system was being exploited to contact children, despite the company having previously disputed concerns about the issue. Following reporting and scrutiny, the problem was acknowledged and addressed.
In 2018, I investigated a blackmail operation targeting businesses through fabricated Facebook reviews. Business owners were being approached and asked to pay for the removal of damaging complaints; in some cases before those complaints had even appeared. The investigation ultimately traced the individual behind the scheme.
More recently, my work has increasingly focused on misinformation, online abuse, stalking, institutional accountability and the gap between what organisations say publicly and what the evidence actually shows.
That shift is also why The Hodlines has become Just The Facts.
The Hodlines was built around my investigations. Just The Facts is intended to become something bigger: a home for investigative journalism, fact-checking and evidence-based analysis in an online environment where claims can travel around the world long before anybody asks whether they are true.
I’m not interested in telling readers what they should think.
I’m interested in showing them what the evidence says.
That means examining viral claims in context, tracing information back to original sources, distinguishing opinion from verifiable fact, correcting misinformation regardless of where it comes from, and being prepared to correct our own reporting when the evidence demands it.
There will still be investigations. There will still be uncomfortable questions. There will still be stories that powerful people and organisations would probably rather weren’t examined.
But there will also be something simpler at the heart of everything published here:
Show the source. Show the evidence. Let the facts speak for themselves.
Just The Facts
Real News. Real Sources. Real Facts.
There are no facts without evidence.