I received a tip about an alleged terror arrest in Bath. Honestly, I was sceptical about the reliability of the source, but given the very high news value I decided to check it out anyway.
Our local police force press office didn’t know anything about the matter. However as terror arrests are unlikely to fall under their jurisdiction, I kept searching further.
I tried my luck with the NPCC and Met Police, before I was directed to Counter Terrorism Policing North East.
Chasing them I was able to get an official statement that a man had in fact been arrested on six serious right-wing terrorism-related offences.
The North East police force was far from a self-evident source of the information – with our patch being in the South West – but my perseverance meant I was able to be the first to break a major news story.
Later named as Andrew Dymock, he is due to face a jury in July, which will be a big story for us.
My initial story had 28,955 page views.
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