GB News is facing a “significant” fine for breaching Ofcom’s impartiality rules after failing in a High Court bid to block sanctions (Telegraph).
At a hearing on Friday, a judge refused GB News’s request for so-called interim relief that would have paused the regulator’s sanctions process pending the outcome of a review.
Lawyers for the start-up news channel said the publication of sanctions details would cause “irreparable damage” to its reputation.
But Mr Justice Chamberlain rejected the argument, saying there was “significant public interest in allowing Ofcom to complete its process and publish its decision”.
He said this would help to promote public confidence in the integrity of Ofcom’s regime and reinforce the importance of compliance among other broadcasters. The judge added that the sanctions process would provide important information to both GB News’s viewers and its advertisers.
The verdict means Ofcom can now push ahead with a potential fine after ruling that GB News committed a “serious and repeated” breach of impartiality rules in a live TV debate featuring Rishi Sunak when he was prime minister.
The court heard that Ofcom had provisionally decided to impose a “significant statutory fine” on the broadcaster. Its final decision is expected in the coming days.
However, the judge granted permission for GB News to launch a judicial review of the breach decision.
Ofcom has agreed not to enforce any fine or requirement for the channel to broadcast a statement about the sanction until the judicial review has been completed.
The regulator received more than 500 complaints about the BBC Question Time-style show, titled People’s Forum: The Prime Minister, which aired on February 12th 2024 and featured a question-and-answer segment between Mr Sunak and a studio audience.
Ofcom launched its investigation following complaints that the hour-long show failed to give appropriate weight to different points of view.
The regulator, 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 went on to claim that GB News failed to challenge the Prime Minister’s arguments, provide alternative point of view, and generally failed to “ensure that an appropriately wide range of significant views”.
Ofcom also found that although some audience questions criticised and challenged the Prime Minister, they were not able to challenge his responses and presenter Stephen Dixon “did not do this to any meaningful extent”.
If confirmed, the fine will mark the first penalty imposed on GB News after a dozen breaches of broadcasting rules on issues ranging from impartiality to its use of politicians as presenters.
Speaking in the House of Commons earlier this year, former Conservative minister Sir Michael Ellis noted that 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.
