Regulator Ofcom said it is considering a statutory sanction against GB News after finding that a ‘people’s forum’ featuring Prime Minister Rishi Sunak broke impartiality rules.
The question-and-answer show saw Mr Sunak given “a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his Government in a period preceding a UK General Election”, said Ofcom.
The media watchdog said it received 547 complaints about the live, hour-long current affairs programme, which aired on February 12.
It said there were “heightened special impartiality requirements” applied to the show, as it was taking place in the run-up to an election.“We found GB News’s approach to compliance to be wholly insufficient, and consider it could have, and should have, taken additional steps to mitigate these risks,” said Ofcom in its ruling on Monday.
“We found that an appropriately wide range of significant viewpoints were not presented and given due weight in the People’s Forum: The Prime Minister, nor was due impartiality preserved through clearly linked and timely programmes.
“As a result, 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.”
It added: “Given this represents a serious and repeated breach of these rules, we are now starting the process for consideration of a statutory sanction against GB News.”
On its website, the news channel on Monday hit back against Ofcom’s decision.
The site quoted a GB News spokesman as saying: “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.”
It said the People’s Forum “placed the public - not journalists - firmly in charge of questioning Rishi Sunak” without interference.
“They did this robustly, intelligently, and freely. Their 15 questions, which neither we nor the Prime Minister saw beforehand, kept him under constant pressure and covered a clearly diverse range of topics,” it added.
The GB News spokesperson continued: “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.”
In March, three Tory MPs were found to have broken Ofcom’s broadcasting rules on due impartiality during programmes on GB News.
The watchdog’s probe involved five episodes of shows presented separately by former House of Commons leader Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, minister without portfolio Esther McVey, and backbencher Philip Davies.
The media watchdog said that because the 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”.
