Stop Funding Hate is trying to close down GB News. What are they afraid of?

At 8pm last Sunday night, GB News became the first news channel in over twenty years to be launched in the UK. Struggling through a plethora of technical issues, its chairman and veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil was highly professional in setting out the channel’s core beliefs and values. In his five-minute speech, Neil made it clear that one of the channel’s main goals was to defend free speech against the oncoming onslaught of cancel culture. Though cancel culture is seen by many on the Left as a Right-wing myth, it is somewhat ironic that within 48 hours of going live, the opponents of GB News have already proven him right.

Stop Funding Hate (SFH) is a Left-wing internet lobby group that campaigns to starve media outlets it dislikes of funding. One common tactic involves targeting a broadcaster’s primary source of revenue – advertising. Any business that advertises with a media outlet that doesn’t conform to SFH’s way of thinking is targeted. SFH does this by urging its army of online followers to message the advertiser– telling them that they are fuelling division and hate. Inundated with warnings and scared of the backlash, the company often pulls its funding. So far, they have succeeded in getting Nivea, Kopparberg, Ikea, Grolsch, Octopus Energy and the Open University to remove their adverts from GB News, all on the spurious claim that the news channel is a hotbed of hatred and bigotry.

When some people hear the word “bigot”, they no doubt think of vile racists or misogynists who believe women must stay at home with the washing. The dictionary definition defines bigotry as intolerance of any belief or opinion that differs from one’s own. Yet exploiting such intolerance is exactly how SFH appears to operate. 

This is not the first time the group has done this. In an act that wouldn’t look out of place in Orwell’s 1984, SFH were trying to get GB News cancelled four months before the channel went live. In February they asked its followers to contact their mobile-phone company demanding that they not advertise with a “Fox News-style” channel like GB News. By using this bizarre form of preemptive censorship, it would appear the group has the ability to predict the future.

From what I’ve seen of GB News so far, there’s little to convince me that it is the bastion of Right-wing hatred its detractors have made it out to be. Guests and presenters have merely put forward anti-woke and anti-lockdown thoughts and opinions. There’s little evidence to compare this to the more combative and strident Fox News in the US. The closest the channel comes is when its presenter Dan Wootton gets a bit too passionate and opinionated. But Wootton, like all presenters, is regulated in what he can and cannot say. As with all broadcast media, the channel must comply with impartiality rules set out and enforced by Ofcom.

With the rise of woke-capitalism, brands are easy prey for this kind of internet activism. Pretending to care about the latest political issue is the quickest way for a company to go viral and virtue signal their right-on credentials. From a business perspective, politics is largely irrelevant. All that drives most firms is the profit motive.

In theory I am not entirely opposed to boycotts. When artists learned that BAE Systems were funding Newcastle’s Great Exhibition of the North, they decided to boycott the two-month long art event. Whether you agree or disagree, it was least done for idealistic or humanistic reasons. BAE is an arms manufacturer who have supplied billions of pounds worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, where for the last five years they’ve unleashed a devastating bombing campaign on Yemen – killing thousands of civilians. But to the best of my knowledge, GB News is not involved in violating anyone’s human rights nor committing any war crimes.

On the contrary, it is SFH’s boycott that is attempting to obstruct one of the most fundamental rights of all – the right to free expression. The only crime being committed by GB News is robbing its audience of decent sound quality.

The backlash is already under way. As with all boycotts, it is not a one-way street. The hashtag #GoWokeGoBroke is trending, urging people to boycott businesses that have themselves boycotted GB News. Other businesses, including the traditionally Left-leaning Co-op, have refused to cave in to internet pressure and will preserve the option of advertising on GB News.

In order to prove its detractors wrong, GB News should invite all those that have criticised it, such as the Guardian’s Stuart Jeffries, to appear on the channel. Although, with the tactics so far employed, it would appear that in the world of SFH, diversity of opinion is seen as a threat that needs to be destroyed. GB News should seize the opportunity to challenge its detractors to defend their attempts to close it down. If they refuse, viewers will draw their own conclusions.

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