Regulators are not generally known for courting controversy. When the day job involves making delicate, legally fraught decisions, they tend to be a circumspect bunch.
However, since stepping down as chair of Ofcom, one of Britain’s most scrutinised watchdogs, the Conservative peer Michael Grade has been doing his best to buck that stereotype. “I’m free of the shackles,” he recently said.
Despite disquiet among many broadcasters over Ofcom’s alleged lack of challenge to GB News, the rightwing network that has brought a partisan brand of broadcasting to Britain, Lord Grade opted to give a series of interviews provocatively pushing back.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme could “absolutely” have a politician presenting it, he said. “Why not?” Later, he went further. GB News’s critics were “embarrassed” because the channel “speaks to the agenda of the majority”, he said, citing Brexit and immigration.
“They’ve actually got better and better [in meeting broadcasting rules],” he said. “It’s not difficult to comply; sometimes it’s only a sentence in a script.”
It was a punchy departure. There is a problem, however. Figures involved in drawing up the impartiality rules that apply to Britain’s broadcasters think Grade has misunderstood the rules his regulator was tasked with enforcing.
Others think his approach is a more deliberate drive to dial back broadcasting impartiality rules, facilitating GB News’s approach in the process.
“This debate has been going on inside certain parts of broadcast media for about three years,” said Stewart Purvis, a former chief executive of ITN and a former Ofcom content and standards partner.
“Now we have the retiring chairman of Ofcom pretty much confirming some of the things we’ve been complaining about and doing it in a very colourful way. It is actually quite shocking … This is classic out-of-thehorse’s-mouth stuff.”
Other former Ofcom figures are equally troubled.
“I thought it reflected a complete misunderstanding of how the impartiality legislation is set out in the Communications Act, how it is set out in the broadcasting code and how it should be applied,” said Chris Banatvala, Ofcom’s founding director of standards, who drafted its code and investigation procedures.
“If Ofcom is taking the approach that a single line or a couple of lines in a long programme suffices and that achieves due impartiality, I think we may have finally got to the bottom of why GB News and other broadcasters are now allowed to do what they do,” he said.
In fact, Banatvala said, broadcasters dealing with controversial topics had to give “due weight” to other views. How and when that was done depended on the show, but he said a sentence would usually not be enough.
“Sometimes on GB News or other channels, you have a presenter and three guests all agreeing and one person not agreeing,” he said. “The idea that sometimes only one sentence can achieve the required impartiality is absurd.”
Grade has repeatedly rejected the claim that GB News has been treated differently. “They have to obey the same rules as the BBC, as ITN, as Sky,” he told the BBC. “If they have a different news agenda to the BBC, that doesn’t make it wrong. That’s good in the name of freedom of expression.”
Ofcom has since distanced itself from Grade’s post-departure comments, but stood by its approach to GB News.
“We apply our rules fairly and equally to all broadcasters, taking action when they fall short, as we have done with GB News,” a spokesperson said. “The role of Ofcom’s chairman is not involved in the application of the broadcasting code or the decision-making process for individual cases. Any personal views a former chairman has expressed do not represent Ofcom policy.”
For its part, GB News has always said it abides by Ofcom’s broadcasting code – and that it now consistently outperforms the BBC News channel and Sky News.
“GB News is Britain’s number one news channel,” it said in a statement. “We have achieved this by serving the people of the United Kingdom with bold, fearless journalism. We are regulated by the Ofcom broadcasting code, not members of the media establishment elite.”
Grade provokes strong opinions. Many describe him as affable and charming – and a true master of commissioning the kind of shows that used to be staple family viewing in the pre-internet age.
Others believe his approach has been informed by a career fighting overzealous regulation.
“I’ve known the guy for at least 30 years,” Purvis said. “We are both from an era when the regulator was definitely the bad guy. There were pre-transmission checks and sometimes bans on programmes. So we grew up thinking that regulation was censorship. It all changed in about 2003, but Michael was still sort of fighting yesterday’s war against regulators.
“His approach has created a culture where Ofcom, in my view, has not been interventionist enough.”
The peer was installed by Boris Johnson’s government in 2022 only after a failed attempt to hand the job to Paul Dacre, the formidable former Daily Mail editor. Some concerns were raised about Grade at the time, not least his lack of expertise in dealing with online harms, as well as some of his past political utterances, including a dislike of “the woke brigade”.
Yet amid the fallout from the attempts to appoint Dacre, Grade was confirmed in the role due to his broadcasting experience. The 83-year-old has held senior positions at the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Many welcomed his arrival.
“Grade is very charming and he is very warm,” said Roger Mosey, a former head of BBC TV News. “When he arrived at Ofcom, it was a good moment. He’s an old-fashioned, big analogue-channel ‘Saturday night entertainment show’ kind of guy.
“Grade’s regulatory period was not the finest piece of his broadcasting life.”
There are many who share Grade’s zeal for free speech, but concerns remain that Ofcom’s approach has effectively weakened broadcasting rules.
Mosey said: “In a converging broadcasting world, I don’t have an inherent problem with there being a channel [GB News] that has got a different set of attitudes in it. What Ofcom has effectively done – now revealed by what Grade says – is sort of lean over backwards to enable it, because they thought it’s the right thing to do, politically.
“I can see why they did that. The problem is, it then got into contorting itself in its regulatory decisions.”
