Imagine how shocked I was to have my free speech endangered by the boss of GB News before the channel even launched. Angelos Frangopoulos was offended by an article I wrote just after the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021, which Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News had arguably fomented with its endlessly repeated lies about the stolen election. I questioned the desirability of the UK being saddled with not one but two new opinion-led “news” channels (GB News and a Murdoch venture, which would eventually debut as TalkTV). Alas, my thoughts did not please Angelos, who was outraged at my “false imagining” that his channel would not be impartial. According to him, I had “misunderstood Ofcom’s due impartiality rules, which do not allow a biased news station in this country”. Mm. Maybe I have also misunderstood the shoplifting laws, which do not allow shoplifting in this country. And yet, shoplifters and biased news stations exist.
Spool forward in disbelief to this week, where the media “regulator” Ofcom has found GB News in breach of impartiality rules yet again. Biologists will know that, along with sloths and anteaters, Ofcom belongs to the order edentata – toothless mammals – so its comment was: “We expect GB News to take careful account of this decision in its compliance of future programming”. Quite why it expects that is a mystery, given this is the fifth time GB News has been found in breach of rules that Frangopoulos once claimed were existential for any UK news channel. Maybe the problem with GB News is that it talks to itself and is so hyper-elite that it essentially exists consequence-free.
GB News is currently the subject of either 11 or 12 further Ofcom investigations – but please don’t waste time writing in to clarify, Angelos! I’d much rather you dedicated your time to concluding your investigation into Dan Wootton, who was the channel’s biggest-rating presenter, until his giggling at Laurence Fox’s aggressively derogatory remarks about a female journalist saw him finally suspended last month. Some had thought Wootton would be suspended earlier, what with claims that he had used a pseudonym to offer colleagues large sums of money for sexual material. But we have to be frightfully careful with these allegations, which he denies, given that Dan has engaged a recherché law firm. (I do enjoy the X page of this Griffin Law , where they style themselves as operating out of “London, Kent and Washington DC”. Hopefully they will sue me over the word “recherché”.)
That Wootton story caused quite a splash – just not in any of the newspapers, newspaper groups or TV channels for which Dan had worked. Which is to say, most of them. Amusingly, not everyone got the memo. “The mainstream press must check this out,” fumed John Cleese, who is himself soon to launch as a GB News presenter, declaring that failure to check this out would be “final proof of their complete corruption”. I would ideally like to see Cleese sued by Frangopoulos, who told a parliamentary committee that GB News would not be checking this out. But even they couldn’t avoid doing something when the Laurence Fox incident happened live on air. While Wootton was suspended, Fox was fired, along with fellow GB News presenter and wingnut vicar Calvin Robinson, who voiced support for the duo. Robinson reportedly promptly launched a crowdfunder to pay his London rent, and was last heard of on a trip to Disney World.
Yet does this level of savage farce spare anyone the need to take GB News seriously? I fear not. On the one hand, not a lot of people currently watch it. On the other, its importance seemingly cannot be overstated by some rather interesting figures. The Conservative party conference featured so many GB News shout-outs that you could almost imagine they were concerted. “I do also want to welcome some more friends here tonight,” announced Priti Patel at one point. “Our friends that are here, the newest, most successful, most dynamic, no-nonsense news station, and the defenders of free speech, that is my friends at GB News. Thank you for everything that you do. Just incredible. Honestly, just incredible.” Then there was Liz Truss. “Thank you for all you do,” she declared on stage to a GB News presenter. “And thank you for your work on GB News. Because in my view, we need more economics journalism, and we need more GB News. Challenging the orthodoxy, broadcasting common sense and transforming our media landscape. So long may it continue.”
As I say: interesting. On the one hand, what could be more establishment than GB News, a London-based media outlet owned by an investment firm and a multimillionaire Oxford-educated hedge fund guy who apparently wants to buy the Daily Telegraph? This is a channel employing not only the recently knighted Jacob Rees-Mogg, but also a deputy chairman of the governing Conservative party, on whose weekly show he can be found interviewing his own MPs and ministers. Anyone to whom that feels anti-establishment has led a somewhat sheltered life. On the other hand … GB News also showcases the likes of Neil Oliver, a guy who once wandered amiably enough around the coast of the UK for BBC documentaries, and now shares antisemitic/new world order/paedo conspiracy theories and likens Bill Gates to Nazi experimenters, as well as calling openly for “revolution”.
To put it very impartially, then, GB News is both totally ridiculous, and the place a certain stripe of politician or turbo-crank feels at home – perhaps increasingly. Quite what it could be fomenting in a few unchecked years’ time is unclear, but a lot of people who should know better do seem carelessly keen to find out.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist. What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber Publishing, £9.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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