The front page Boris Johnson 'couldn't bear to look at'

A damning front page has made UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s election bid much harder.

The Daily Mirror published a photo of Jack Williment-Barr, 4, sleeping on the floor of the Leeds General Infirmary on its front page on Monday.

Jack was on the floor due to a lack of hospital beds. It was suspected he had pneumonia.

“Picture that shames Tories,” the headline reads.

“Desperate.”

His mum Sarah Williment told the paper she had to cover the boy with blankets to keep him warm.

TV presenter Piers Morgan questioned whether the “harrowing” front page “Boris Johnson couldn’t bear to look at” could derail the UK Prime Minister.

The opposition Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn painted the boy's plight as a symptom of Britain's ailing health system, which has suffered under years of conservative government austerity measures.

In a bizarre interview on ITV, Mr Johnson was asked about the photo of Jack by a journalist who had it on his phone.

Mr Johnson initially refused to look at the photo before he swiped the journalist’s phone.

“His mother says the NHS is in crisis,” the journalist told Mr Johnson.

The PM said the photo is “terrible”.

“And I apologise to the family, and all those who have had terrible experiences in the NHS,” he said.

“But what we are doing is supporting the NHS and on the whole I think patients in the NHS have a much, much better experience than this poor kid has had.”

Mr Johnson then apologised for taking the phone.

Questions over photo’s legitimacy

There have been questions over whether the photo is legit with suggestions there may have been a bed available, with a Facebook post prompting a counter-narrative.

“Very interesting. A good friend of mine is a senior nursing sister at Leeds Hospital,” the post began, and went on to spin the tale that the photo of Jack was set up for the cameras.

It soon was shared thousands of times. Disinformation experts noticed interesting similarities among the posts. For starters, Facebook and Twitter users shared the exact same language of the post by either copying and pasting the wording or taking screenshots of it.

They tried to bring it to the attention of “influencers” with big Twitter followings by tagging prominent users like former soccer stars Rio Ferdinand and Gary Lineker, as well as Mr Johnson, in an apparent attempt to amplify the message, said Alastair Reid, digital editor at First Draft, a nonprofit group that investigates misinformation.

There also were attempts to tag British TV journalists Robert Peston and Laura Kuenssberg, who were duped hours earlier into sharing a separate fake story about a government minister’s aide being punched that apparently was spread by conservative party insiders, Mr Reid said.

The post also was shared widely in public Facebook groups advocating for Brexit, the conservative party’s main cause at the election.

A woman whose Facebook account was used to publish a claim that the original story was fake told The Guardian newspaper that she had been hacked.

“I am not a nurse and I certainly don’t know anyone in Leeds,” the woman told the Guardian, which said it was withholding her name because she said she had received death threats.

The newspaper said she tried to report the hack to a fraud advice service.

The Associated Press was unable to contact the woman or Jack’s mother.

With The Associated Press

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