Piers Morgan has said impartiality rules on British television are anachronistic, as the media regulator struggles to deal with upstart channels GB News and TalkTV pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable.
The presenter said television news was “massively regulated” in the UK and the existing rules could be manipulated by lobby groups and powerful people.
Morgan quit ITV’s Good Morning Britain after he was asked to apologise for making critical comments about the Duchess of Sussex – although Ofcom concluded later he had not broken any rules. “I was hired to be a deliberately provocative controversialist,” Morgan said. “For five years I expressed very strongly held opinions about everything and I never had any Ofcom rulings against me.”
Morgan, who now works for TalkTV, made the comments while appearing at the Royal Television Society conference in Cambridge, where he debated impartiality alongside the Channel 4 presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
Guru-Murthy said the arrival of GB News meant Tory ministers could choose to answer “softball questions” from a friendly broadcaster rather than appear on his programme: “This government uses GB News as a platform ... The issue is not that they exist but how people in power use them.”
The Channel 4 presenter said that this challenged the ability of public service broadcasters to provide impartial news and would be just as bad if Labour politicians only appeared on leftwing outlets.
The broadcasting code requires “due impartiality” in current affairs output, meaning presenters can have strong views but audiences need to be exposed to alternative ways of thinking. They do not require that exactly the same amount of time is given to opposing views.
The GB News boss Angelos Frangopoulos, whose channel is dealing with multiple impartiality investigations by Ofcom, told the event there was a problem with interpreting the impartiality rules, as it was unclear what was unacceptable: “Journalism should be about looking at all perspectives. The regulatory layer weakens the ability of the broadcaster and the journalist to apply their judgment of what impartiality is.”
He also defended the decision to use two serving Conservative MPs – Esther McVey and Philip Davies – as presenters to interview the Conservative chancellor, Jeremy Hunt: “We’re here to innovate. We had a centrist chancellor being interviewed by two MPs from another wing of the party. Then we had opposing views from viewers.”
Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News, suggested there was a problem with some organisations following Ofcom’s rules and others not following the rules: “Is there going to be a clarity created for organisations that deliver on the impartiality code? I am glad to be working for an organisation I know consumers can trust.”
