GB News has hit back against Ofcom’s decision to uphold complaints about shows hosted by Tory MPs Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey and Phillip Davies after the media regulator found five episodes breached broadcasting rules. The broadcaster has more on its website.
Ofcom announced the five episodes broke set rules due to politicians “acting as news presenters”.
However, GB News stressed the media watchdog’s ruling is based on arbitrary changes to how Ofcom determines impartiality.
A GB News spokesman said: “We are deeply concerned by the decisions Ofcom has made today.
“We will raise this directly with the regulator in the strongest possible terms.
“Ofcom is obliged by law to promote free speech and media plurality and to ensure that alternative voices are heard.
“Its latest decisions, in some cases a year after the programme aired, contravene those duties.
“Extraordinarily, Ofcom has determined that a programme which it acknowledges was impartial and lacking in any expression of opinion, still somehow breaches its impartiality rules just because an imaginary viewer might think otherwise.
“Ofcom has now arbitrarily changed the test so that it is no longer ‘Was it impartial?’ but ‘Could someone think it might not be?’
“This is a chilling development for all broadcasters, for freedom of speech, and for everyone in the United Kingdom.
“These decisions go against established precedent and raises serious questions about Ofcom’s oversight over its own regulations.
“It appears that Ofcom is trying to extend the regulations, rather than enforcing definitions which have been settled for many years.”
He added: “GB News is a regulated broadcast channel and takes its obligations very seriously.”
Worth reading in full.
The issue, apparently, is that politicians may host current affairs shows but are not allowed to host news programmes – and Ofcom claims the MPs’ shows would be understood by viewers as news programmes.
All five programmes in question contained a mix of news and current affairs content. We found that host politicians acted as newsreaders, news interviewers or news reporters in sequences which clearly constituted news – including reporting breaking news events – without exceptional justification. News was, therefore, not presented with due impartiality.
Stop Press: Jacob Rees-Mogg has responded to the ruling: “Old fashioned is usually good but Ofcom is antediluvian.”
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How many in OFCOM are ex BBC?
Just asking …
I’d also say GBN didn’t do itself any favours by running scared from them over the Mark Steyn and Dan Wootten issues.
Keep fighting, don’t take a backward step.
I completely agree 👍
How many OfCom are ex-BBC? I’d say more to the point is why don’t OfCom find the BBC in breach of impartiality rules, as a ‘whole organisation’, as the knowingly one-sided reporting on a number of issues on countless occasions is well known.
Farage claims Ofcom and others trying to shut down GB News. 4 mins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT5qeH161Rc
Ofcom showing bias. It’s enough to make one think that the wholly impartial Ofcom are having their scripts written elsewhere by other shall we say ‘interested’ parties. Pure conjecture of course.
Well I never.
Indeed. Ofcom should exist solely to regulate use of the broadcast spectrum – a technical role. It should not regulate content.
What we need is Office For Free UK.
Translated into plain English, people at Ofcom are afraid that allowing Rees-Moog, McVey and Davies to present news will undermine the credibilty of the BBC news service. Assuming this was indeed the case, could this perhaps be the fault of the BBC?
Those doorstep polls must be horrendous for the Uniparties to have started the move to close down GB News before the date of the GE is known.
Meanwhile Jo Brand (never knowingly under-lunched) says that Nigel Farage should have been showered with battery acid instead of milk and that’s just fine and dandy according to Ofcom. Ofcommunists.
Under lynched?
What a total fraud Esther McVey has revealed herself to be in today’s Daily Express.
‘Self-indulgent’ Tories urged to ‘unite’ behind Rishi Sunak in stark election warning | Politics | News | Express.co.uk
Envious that Penny Mordaunt is being favoured as a possible replacement for Dismal Failure Sunak that nobody wants, Esther has leapt to his defence to keep her own prospects open. Penny stands almost alone as a Protestant in the government, whereas Irish Catholic Esther joins her fellow Catholics Truss, Rees-Mogg & a host of others, which is yet another reason Mordaunt is loudly denounced as a possible candidate for PM.
According to the law of this land, both the Monarch and the Monarch’s Prime Minister must be Protestant. All others hold the post illegally.
Do you seriously think there is this sectarianism going on? Isn’t it the case that most politicians will unite behind their leader especially as an election is coming up. What chance is there to win an election if you don’t support the leader of the party?
1) Yes.
2) Of course not when the leader is detested by the whole country.
3) You change the leader.
mmmm. Ok but the Tories have changed their leaders 4 times in recent years. How many more do you propose they change?
As many as they want.
Your comments are really just tittle tattle—-How do you know that McVey is “envious”? ——You don’t know that at all, you are indulging in gossip
My comments are every bit as valid as yours, Bruce.
Some of them are and I agreed with you on those……But not here. What evidence have you that Mcvey is envious?
You are trying to deny my Freedom of Speech on this Free Speech Union website founded by Toby Young.
Pack it in.
Nope. —-I welcome your free speech, and also my free speech to disagree with you. And also my right to ask you questions about your comments. So I ask you once again —-What evidence have you that Mcvey is envious? Or is it just the case that you are indulging in tittle tattle mindless gossip? ——–Oh and who is Bruce?————-PS You might have noticed on another article I fully agreed with you and said so. We cannot always agree and that is what is great about this website.
Who remembers Climategate? ——In 2009 emails were hacked from the Climate research Unit in East Anglia and others who worked with them. It was a clear as the nose on your face what these emails were showing. A deliberate and calculated attempt to keep from the pubic the true state of knowledge regarding climate and climate change. The thousands of emails (not just a few here and there) revealed clear unethical practices such as data tampering and keeping contrary views out of the peer review process.——————- Lo and behold along comes several enquiries to sweep the whole disgraceful episode under the carpet because the entire political agenda was at risk. The weaponisation of weather had to be maintained. ——–People can read all about this stuff for themselves but what it shows is the political class determined to maintain power by any means and that transparency is to be denied. ——–This is very relevant to what is currently going on with GB News. Because this channel will question many aspects of political agendas eg Net Zero, that the political class don’t want questioned. If Climate change was really all about science why is it that no aspect of this “science” is ever looked at or questioned by the BBC or SKY NEWS and almost all mainstream channels? If something is really about science isn’t it supposed to be scrutinised and investigated? Then there is all of the supposed solutions to the alleged climate crisis that also are never questioned. When it comes to climate there is never any serious investigative journalism. Climate Change and its solutions are simply given a free pass. ——-On the Nana Akua show on Saturday afternoons there is often a climate activist called Jim Dale who sees everything that ever happens in the world as due to human activities, but they also have others on the show presenting valid points of view that BBC eg would NEVER do.——-So who is it that isn’t being impartial? ——–It certainly is NOT GB NEWS. It appears that “regulators” are simply just censors, and they would censor GB News out of existence if they thought they could get away with it.
They should sue the state censor like mark Steyn is doing
The Establishment wants GB News shut down; it’s threatening their control of “the narrative.”
It will do whatever is necessary to achieve it.
I do, however, think it was a mistake to hire serving MPs (ie Rees-Mogg and Anderson) as presenters.
I have no problem with it. ——90% of the media has Liberal Progressive bias, will the left not be happy till they have the whole 100%? I was also surprised to hear that 70% of people get their News from the BBC, so no wonder they think GB News are right wing extremists.
GB News question Climate Change and Net Zero. The BBC never question Climate Change and Net Zero. ———–So remind me again, who is it that isn’t impartial ?