GB News has accused Ofcom of a “sinister” attack on democracy after it threatened the broadcaster with a substantial fine following an investigation into a programme featuring Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that it claims represented a “serious and repeated breach” of broadcasting due impartiality rules (Guardian, Press Gazette, Telegraph).
The BBC Question Time-style show, titled People’s Forum: The Prime Minister, aired on February 12th. Ofcom launched its investigation following complaints that the hour-long show failed to give appropriate weight to different points of view.
Ofcom, which has carried out 23 formal investigations amid 13 breaches of broadcast rules by GB News, accepted there was nothing wrong in principle with the format of the programme, in which Sunak answered questions from 100 voters in County Durham.
However, it claims GB News failed to challenge his arguments, provide alternative point of view, and generally failed to “ensure that an appropriately wide range of significant views”.
The regulator found that although some audience questions criticised and challenged the PM, they were not able to challenge his responses and presenter Stephen Dixon “did not do this to any meaningful extent”.
It said Sunak was able to set out policies his government planned to implement if re-elected in the upcoming general election and no significant alternative views on these were mentioned.
Sunak was also able to criticise Labour’s policies and performance without that party’s side being included, Ofcom added.
“As a result,” the regulator concluded, “we consider that the Prime Minister had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his government in a period preceding a UK general election.”
Picking up on this claim, however, GB News presenter and sitting Conservative MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg points out that “there is nothing in the broadcast code that says anything about ‘preceding a UK General Election’ other than when Parliament has been dissolved and we are in an official election period, which we were not during the programme, and still are not now.
“We’re not even in the electoral commission’s pre general election early spending period which starts in July,” he added.
Having concluded its investigation, Ofcom will now consider a statutory sanction against the channel.
The broadcast regulator’s potential sanctions include: telling a broadcaster not to repeat certain content or to air a correction or statement of its findings, a financial penalty, and ultimately shortening, suspending or revoking a broadcast licence. An initial decision on any potential sanction will be made within the next 60 days, before GB News is then given a chance to make its case in response.
In a statement, GB News said that Ofcom’s action should “terrify anyone who believes that the media’s role is to give a voice to the people of the UK”.
The statement continued: “Ofcom’s finding against GB News today is an alarming development in its attempt to silence us by standing in the way of a forum that allows the public to question politicians directly.
“The regulator’s threat to punish a news organisation with sanctions for enabling people to challenge their own prime minister strikes at the heart of democracy at a time when it could not be more vital.
“We cannot fathom how Ofcom can claim this programme lacked the ‘appropriately wide range of significant views’ required to uphold due impartiality. It did not.
“We maintain that the programme was in line with the Broadcasting Code.
“Ofcom is obliged by law to uphold freedom of speech and not to interfere with the right of all news organisations to make their own editorial decisions within the law.
“Its finding today is a watershed moment that should terrify anyone who believes, as we do, that the media’s role is to give a voice to the people of the United Kingdom, especially those who all too often feel unheard or ignored by their politicians.”
Ofcom had previously put GB News on notice because of its alleged lack of compliance with broadcasting rules. Indeed, according to former Conservative minister Sir Michael Ellis, speaking in the House of Commons earlier this year, the regulator has instigated so many inquiries into the channel that it risks “looking biased and political” and is in danger of “putting [itself] in judicial review territory”.
GB News was first found to have breached Ofcom requirements in March over “materially misleading” comments about Covid-19 vaccines made by presenter Mark Steyn a year earlier. The channel was sanctioned again in May over “unopposed” claims about the vaccines by a guest appearing on Steyn’s show in October 2022.
Steyn left GB News shortly before the first rebuke, claiming he had been asked to sign a contract that would have made him personally liable for any Ofcom fines he incurred for breaching the Broadcasting Code.
Earlier this year, the regulator ruled five GB News programmes presented by Conservative MPs breached due impartiality rules as none of them had “exceptional justification” for the politicians acting in a newsreader or reporter role “in sequences which clearly constituted news”.
According to the Broadcasting Code: “No politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified. In that case, the political allegiance of that person must be made clear to the audience.”
Other impartiality breaches identified by Ofcom last year included sitting Conservative MPs Esther McVey and Philip Davies interviewing Chancellor Jeremy Hunt days before the Spring Budget, and a discussion between former Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney and the leader of the Reform Party, Richard Tice, about immigration policy.
In March, Ofcom said it had “significant concerns” about the editorial control GB News had over its live output after ruling that former host Laurence Fox made “unambiguously misogynistic” comments about a female journalist on Dan Wootton’s show in September.
