The new chairman of Ofcom has suggested that the internet/broadcast regulator could take a much tougher approach against GB News. Two-tier regulation…
Former Channel 4 chairman Ian Cheshire was yesterday formally appointed as new chairman the regulator. He spoke to the Science, Innovation, and Technology Committee of MPs late last month about GB News. Asked whether he had seen The New World’s campaign against the channel, Cheshire said Rusbridger had been in contact with him…
He added that the regulator takes a programme by programme approach as opposed to looking at channels as a whole, but said he was“very open to being challenged about that, and I’m intending to meet up with Alan [Rusbridger] in due course.”
Worryingly, when asked about whether he agreed with the current Ofcom framework for allowing politicians to present programmes, Cheshire said: “It is literally the second question in my induction plan… it is very high on the list.” Activists and anti-GB News rags like The New World have been pushing that agenda hard…
Cheshire’s predecessor Lord Grade said those same activists are “embarrassed by the fact that there is a news organisation that has a different news agenda to them, that speaks to the agenda of the majority.“ And that it now beats Sky News and BBC News on the regular…
Even with a 30-minute sit-down with the PM, Cathy Newman’s debut show on Sky News still recorded lower BARB ratings than GB News Tonight with Martin Daubney. Sky trailed throughout the entire hour, including every minute Starmer was onscreen…
Newman’s show, which aired for the first time at 7pm last night, peaked at 97,600 viewers. In the same slot, GB News Tonight pulled in 160,700…
The average over the hour had GB News at 138,200 and Sky News on 86,175. Starmer is kryptonite to the viewers…
Former Guardian editor and media standards bloviator Alan Rusbridger has been spending his time appearing in broadcast studios and writing articles on his special investigation into GB News. He claims that the channel is “driving a coach and horses through the laws that were put in place to define broadcasting in the UK” and that Ofcom has “more or less given up the ghost”…
Rusbridger seems to have forgotten his own record on media accountability. In 2020 he was appointed to the Irish’s government “Future of Media” commission, which was tasked with upholding journalistic standards. One year later Rusbridger was was forced to resign from it over a piece that Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade had written in 2014 – while Rusbridger was editor…
Greenslade wrote a piece stating that the BBC had been “too willing to accept” a statement from Máiría Cahill, a former Labour Senator, that she was raped by an alleged member of the IRA when she was 16. Rusbridger reportedly said he knew at the time that Greenslade was a supporter of Sinn Fein. In 2021, the issue resurfaced when Greenslade admitted to being “in complete agreement about the right of the Irish people to engage in armed struggle.” Even the Guardian’s “readers editor” said Greenslade “ought to have been open about his position,” and Rusbridger’s successor Katherine Viner said it “was not handled appropriately.“ Something something glass houses…
Ed Davey used one of his only two PMQs questions to accuse GB News of being “Reform propaganda“, and called for even more Ofcom censorship to stop GBN somehow “turn[ing] our great country into their vision of Trump’s America“. Just four days ago he gave a long form interview to the channel’s Chief Political Correspondent Katherine Forster, in which he repeatedly attacked Trump, insisted the US president was “out of control“, and claimed the “Liberal Democrats have answers“. This clip aired multiple times and was shared across the channel’s social media platforms to millions of people.
Apparently this is not good enough for Ed. Ofcom or even the Prime Minister needs to get involved. Forster was also the only national broadcaster to bother going to the LibDems’ spring conference. Given how terrible it was, maybe Davey wanted Ofcom to ensure absolutely no one knew it even happened…
An extraordinary moment on GB News as small boat migrants arrive in Ramsgate while the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is still on her feet announcing reforms to legal and illegal migration. You couldn’t make it up…
UPDATE: 65 illegal immigrants just disembarked BF Hurricane according to GB News‘ Mark White.
Guido is in favour of this and would like to see more of it. Chris Mason should do his News at Six hit while skydiving and Beth Rigby needs to hop on a pogo stick outside Downing Street. It might save the legacy broadcasters…
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”