GB News: an analysis
Last week I watched the evening output of GB News for three days. Here is my account of what I found. I have tried to be as even-handed as possible.
Last October the actor Laurence Fox was sacked by GB News, following his controversial appearance on Tonight Live with Dan Wootton when he asked, “what self-respecting man” would “climb into bed” with the journalist Ava Evans. It was a vile comment and in December Ofcom said that the Fox incident had received the most complaints of any topic during the year.
However, some of the responses were over the top. There was a particularly self-righteous studio discussion on Newsnight on September 27, in which two of the three panellists, Adam Boulton and Caroline Nokes, the Conservative MP, called for GB News to be taken off the air. Boulton said: “Frankly, what Ofcom should do is shut it down, like it shut down RT [Russia Today]…” and Ms Nokes attacked GB News for what she called “blatantly misogynistic, outdated, hideous attitudes”. She too said GB News should be “taken off air”. Boulton, of course, was a longtime presenter on Sky News, a rival of GB News, but Caroline Nokes had apparently been happy to appear on GB News several times.
GB News is sneered at by people who never criticise the biased coverage of mainstream TV news programmes, whether of Brexit or more recently of Gaza. Yes, GB News is often biased. It takes a right-wing line on British politics. But when it is biased, it is transparently so. It is unashamedly right-wing. But the real question is that in an increasingly homogenous TV news culture which is increasingly woke, anti-Israel and pro-Left in its agenda, GB News is the one dissenting voice which unashamedly speaks out for marginalised opinions about Brexit, immigration and Islamist extremists. In an increasingly intolerant metropolitan culture these opinions are considered completely unacceptable. This is a far more serious issue than the Laurence Fox episode, because it raises questions about what kinds of news coverage is considered appropriate by the mainstream news programmes and their viewers and what is not.
On Friday evening the Prime Minister gave an unexpected live address on television from outside 10 Downing Street, expressing concern about the state of the nation, partly in response to George Galloway’s victory in Rochdale, but also in response to the increasingly bitter culture wars about Gaza. GB News covered it live and followed the broadcast with an hour-long programme about Sunak’s speech and its significance. The panel was balanced: Professor Matt Goodwin on the Right and the journalist Ella Whelan, who although she writes regularly for The Telegraph and The Critic, was a feisty counterfoil to Goodwin, consistently criticising his concerns with immigration and Islamism.
Contrast this with the Six O’Clock News on BBC 1 which — astonishingly — did not lead with the Prime Minister’s live broadcast on an issue which has dominated much of the news for weeks, but instead led with Alexei Navalny’s funeral, followed by George Galloway’s victory in Rochdale. The BBC barely managed any kind of response at all to Mr Sunak’s speech, with absurdly short reports by Vicky Young and Chris Mason. Which, would you say, provided a more appropriate response to an important news event?
Critics of GB News would argue that the BBC got it right. Navalny’s funeral was a big international news story and undeniably one of the big problems with GB News is how insular its coverage is. It is unashamedly concerned with British news and offers little coverage of major stories like Ukraine, Gaza and elections in India and Iran. This is for two reasons. First, financial. GB News, unlike the BBC and Sky News, cannot afford to have reporters, offices and TV crews around the world. Second, it’s a matter of ideological choice. GB News knows its audience. Its viewers are interested in stories close to home.
They are also fascinated by stories about the royals, hence the daily coverage of news stories about the monarchy. Last Friday GB News ran an item about whether King Charles and the Princess of Wales were open enough about their health problems. On Thursday they ran an item asking why Prince William had not attended King Constantine’s funeral and why he pulled out at such short notice. And before he was pulled off air, Dan Wootton’s programme always featured an interview or discussion about the Royal Family. It’s also worth pointing out that GB News presenters are consistently hostile to the Duke of Sussex and his wife.
However, the discussion about the health of King Charles and the Princess of Wales, with ITN and BBC News veteran Nicholas Owen and David Oldroyd-Bolt, a contributor to The Telegraph and The Spectator, was reasonable and well argued. It wouldn’t have been out of place on any good BBC News programme.
There is a more important point. While most liberals/leftists within the M25 are happy to dismiss GB News, very few offer a close reading of its output. Yes, it is unashamedly populist. It consistently offers a diet of Royals, often partisan discussions of immigration, Islamism, and regularly attacks Sunak and Starmer. And, yes, it rarely gives a voice to Labour, LibDem, Green or SNP politicians, but has provided a regular TV pulpit for Lee Anderson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage.
However, Farage and Rees-Mogg, in particular, offer surprisingly balanced and thoughtful interviews and discussions on important topics. Last Wednesday Farage interviewed a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council about whether there should be an independent European army. This was followed by an interview with a Welsh farmer about the spate of Welsh farmers’ protests and another discussion about whether the rising cost of cigarettes and vaping might risk driving young smokers to cheaper, soft drugs.
On Thursday’s programme, Farage interviewed two guests about the rise in legal immigration, one from Migration Watch and the other from the LSE’s School of Public Policy. The discussion was smart and thoughtful. It was followed by a preview of the Spring Budget and an interview with a retired senior policeman about policing protests.
Another regular slot on GB News is Rees-Mogg’s State of the Nation. Rees- Mogg, like Farage, has his bugbears and obsessions. He is consistently anti-Green, pro-Brexit and pro-Catholic (therefore anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia). But his interview with the Chief Executive of Humanists UK about an Assisted Dying Law was respectful and informative. Similarly, his interviews the previous evening with a Professor of Russian and East European Politics at the University of Kent, about Macron’s talk of sending troops to Ukraine, and with a Senior Fellow of Civitas, also about Ukraine, were both informative. Rees-Mogg concluded, “Putin must be defeated. He must not be allowed to win… Likewise Hamas.” This is not a British version of Fox News.
On Thursday evening, Rees-Mogg interviewed a spokeswoman for Tax Justice UK about whether the tax status of non-doms should be changed. They disagreed, but the point was that the conversation offered two interestingly different perspectives on an important topical issue.
Other programmes, Dewbs & Co. and Patrick Christy’s Tonight, are more openly populist in tone and in their agenda. But that is like saying Channel 4 News is a bit highbrow and a bit pro-Left. They suit a particular audience and feed its prejudices. If you don’t like the prejudices of Newsnight presenters and producers, or those of Channel 4 News, don’t watch. If you don’t want to hear Patrick Christys, a young, lively (or mouthy, according to choice) presenter having a go at Angela Rayner’s housing scandal or Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s alleged deal with Labour, switch channels. But you can’t say these are not important topics, or that there shouldn’t be room in TV news for a very different perspective from Victoria Derbyshire or Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
One of the regular features of Christy’s programme is “Head to Head”, in which two people with very different views, argue over a topical story. Last Thursday, for example, Angela Epstein debated with Tasnime Akunjee, Shamima Begum’s lawyer, about whether anti-Israel protest marches are intimidating.
Panellists on GB News are mixed. Some are really not very interesting and are far too strident. Some are much worse than that. Others, however, are more interesting: veteran political journalists like Michael Crick and Nigel Nelson, the former BBC political correspondent John Sergeant, Poppy Coburn, the Assistant Comment Editor at The Telegraph, Mark Littlewood, formerly of the IEA, and former Labour adviser, Matthew Laza.
Critics of GB News, however, would never dream of attacking Mishal Husain’s interview on the Today programme with Grant Shapps, in which she stridently defended the BBC’s absurd decision not to call Hamas a terrorist organisation. Nor would such critics care that last week’s Question Time panel was arguably the most biased in the 44-year history of the programme. GB News has many faults. It is sometimes impartial but often not. Its news agenda is parochial and obsessed with the royals. It still has technical problems and some of its studio guests are not up to the job. Too often left-wing guests are chosen because they’re not very smart and will alienate viewers. And, yes, GB News is right-wing news for right-wing people.
But in the age of Brexit, growing concern about “hate marches”, Islamism and the failures of multiculturalism, there is a place for such programmes, providing they do not increase intolerance, racism and prejudice and stick to providing a sometimes useful corrective to the left-wing bias of much of our TV news elsewhere. The mainstream is not as broad-minded or as impartial as it claims to be, and it is getting worse all the time.
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