GB News has issued an astonishing attack on Ofcom after the communications regulator said it had broken its rules on due impartiality over a question and answer session with the prime minister.
Ofcom said People’s Forum: The Prime Minister represented a serious and repeated breach of the rules and it was now considering a statutory sanction against the right-leaning broadcaster.
“Given the very high compliance risks this programme presented, we found GB News’s approach to compliance to be wholly insufficient, and consider it could have, and should have, taken additional steps to mitigate these risks,” Ofcom said in a statement.
“The Prime Minister had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his Government in a period preceding a UK General Election.”
However, in a typically robust response, GB News insisted the Prime Minister had been questioned “robustly, intelligently and freely” and described Ofcom’s intervention as an “alarming development in its attempt to silence us”.
“The regulator’s threat to punish a news organisation with sanctions for enabling people to challenge their own Prime Minister strikes at the heart of democracy at a time when it could not be more vital.
“Ofcom is obliged by law to uphold freedom of speech and not to interfere with the right of all news organisations to make their own editorial decisions within the law.
“Its finding today is a watershed moment that should terrify anyone who believes, as we do, that the media’s role is to give a voice to the people of the United Kingdom, especially those who all too often feel unheard or ignored by their politicians.”
Ofcom received 547 complaints about this live, hour-long current affairs programme, which featured Rishi Sunak in front of a studio audience answering questions about the Government’s policies and performance. With a General Election due to be called before next January heightened special impartiality requirements applied.
Ofcom says it took into account a range of factors, such as: the audience’s questions to the Prime Minister; the Prime Minister’s responses; the presenter’s contribution; and whether due impartiality was preserved through clearly linked and timely programmes.
The Prime Minister was able to set out future policies that his Government planned to implement, if re-elected, but was largely unchallenged by either the presenter or the audiences. Although some questions from the audience were critical, there were no follow up questions to challenge him.
As is to be expected Mr Sunak was critical of the opposition Labour party, but there were no views from the Labour party included in the programme – or any signposting to, say, a similar programme featuring the Labour leader.
Ofcom has concluded GB News to be in breach of Rules 5.11 and 5.12 of the Broadcasting Code. It will now begin a 60 day period during which it will evaluate whether a sanction is appropriate.
In March, Ofcom ruled GB News shouldn’t have used politicians as news presenters and had broken the impartiality rules on five separate occasions.
Journalist Dan Wootton’s show was found to be in breach of Ofcom’s programming code after he let misogynistic comments by the political activist Laurence Fox go unchallenged.
