{"id":506141,"date":"2026-06-18T13:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T13:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/506141\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T13:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T13:36:08","slug":"graham-norton-secures-court-order-compelling-facebook-to-disclose-those-behind-deeply-distressing-account-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/506141\/","title":{"rendered":"Graham Norton secures court order compelling Facebook to disclose those behind \u2018deeply distressing\u2019 account \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Broadcaster Graham Norton<\/a> has secured a US court order to force social media firm Meta<\/a> to reveal who is behind a Facebook<\/a> account publishing \u201cuntrue and deeply distressing\u201d posts about his life, legal records show. <\/p>\n

A submission to a district court in California said a Facebook page called The Westminster Wire has published \u201cfalse and harassing\u201d posts about Norton since it was set up in December 2025.<\/p>\n

It added many posts have been fabricated articles accompanied with AI-generated images of Norton, which implied he made racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant comments.<\/p>\n

Legal representatives for Norton said the content on the Facebook page, which has close to 9,000 followers, was \u201cwholly untrue and deeply distressing to Mr Norton and damaging to his reputation\u201d. <\/p>\n

The Northern District of California court has granted Norton\u2019s legal team permission to ask for records held by Meta, which controls the Facebook platform, that may help identify who is the individual behind The Westminster Wire page.<\/p>\n

Norton\u2019s submission to the US court said he plans to take legal action in England against the individual or group that has published the content on the Facebook page.<\/p>\n

His legal team said their client would be unable to determine the account holder\u2019s identity or commence court proceedings without the information held by Meta in the US, which lies beyond the jurisdictional reach of the English courts.<\/p>\n

Norton, who has won nine BAFTA awards, has been an established household personality in the UK for many years.<\/p>\n

He has hosted his talkshow The Graham Norton Show on BBC since 2007 and also authored a number of award-winning books.<\/p>\n

His submission to the US court detailed a number of fabricated posts that appeared on the The Westminster Wire page that have harmed his reputation, including posts from February 2026 that falsely claimed Norton made xenophobic remarks about Somali immigrants.<\/p>\n

It said a post in March 2026, which was accompanied by an AI-generated image, claimed Norton was in hospital, while another post that month falsely claimed he made racist remarks about London\u2019s mayor Sadiq Khan.<\/p>\n

Norton asked Meta to remove the account, but told the US court the company has failed to do so. <\/p>\n

The Westminster Wire page is still active and has published six posts about Norton in the past 24 hours, which have made allegations about developments in his personal and professional life.<\/p>\n

Facebook owner Meta has faced criticism on many occasions in recent years from media personalities over false and misleading content being published on its social media platform.<\/p>\n

In 2022, Meta apologised to broadcaster Miriam O\u2019Callaghan as part of the settlement of her High Court action over defamatory and untrue adverts that were posted on the social media platform.<\/p>\n

Irish businessman Denis O\u2019Brien also sued Meta over what he called \u201cfake ads\u201d on the social media site.<\/p>\n

In July 2024, the company agreed to provide O\u2019Brien with information that would help identify who was behind \u201cfalse and malicious\u201d advertisements on its platforms that contained his name and image.<\/p>\n

Representatives for Norton and Meta did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Broadcaster Graham Norton has secured a US court order to force social media firm Meta to reveal who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,823,30387,61,60,1226,90],"class_list":["post-506141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-facebook","tag-graham-norton","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-meta","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}