Conservative broadcaster GB News warned by government agency for having bias 'without exceptional justification'



A conservative broadcaster in the United Kingdom received an official government warning for not being impartial and having politicians appear on the network without on-screen opposition.

GB News was warned by the Office of Communications that some of their news shows were not unbiased enough. After an investigation that began in the summer of 2023, GB News was found to have violated Ofcom's regulatory guidelines surrounding impartiality in a total of five broadcasts.

Two episodes of "Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State of the Nation," two episodes of "Friday Morning with Esther and Phil," and one episode of "Saturday Morning with Esther and Phil" between May and June 2023 were the offending programs.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey, and Philip Davies are all Conservative Party members of parliament.

"We found that host politicians acted as newsreaders, news interviewers or news reporters in sequences which clearly constituted news — including reporting breaking news events — without exceptional justification. News was, therefore, not presented with due impartiality," the regulator said, according to Variety.

"Politicians have an inherently partial role in society and news content presented by them is likely to be viewed by audiences in light of that perceived bias. In our view, the use of politicians to present the news risks undermining the integrity and credibility of regulated broadcast news," the government agency added.

The U.K. regulator has rules surrounding fairness, impartiality, and bias; meaning the government decides whether or not a news broadcaster's presentation is fair enough.

According to Ofcom, news channels must have "due impartiality" in their broadcasts. Their definition of the term is vague as well:

"'Due' is an important qualification to the concept of impartiality. Impartiality itself means not favouring one side over another. 'Due' means adequate or appropriate to the subject and nature of the programme. So 'due impartiality' does not mean an equal division of time has to be given to every view, or that every argument and every facet of every argument has to be represented."

Sorry @Ofcom you are not adjudicators you are activists.
— (@)

Ofcom declared that GB News was in violation of Rule 5.1, which states "news, in whatever form, must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality."

The broadcaster was also found to be in violation of Rule 5.3, which states that "no politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified. In that case, the political allegiance of that person must be made clear to the audience."

"GB News is put on notice that any repeated breaches of Rules 5.1 and 5.3 may result in the imposition of a statutory sanction," the regulator added.

A GB News spokesperson said that they are "deeply concerned by the decisions Ofcom has made."

"Ofcom is obliged by law to promote free speech and media plurality, and to ensure that alternative voices are heard. Its latest decisions, in some cases a year after the program aired, contravene those duties," the spokesperson added.

Ofcom wants me to show due impartiality when someone is stabbed but does nothing about the diet of left wingery on Channel 4 News.
— (@)

"The issue here, is there has been countless times to which the BBC have indirectly broken these impartiality rules, yet Ofcom have been reluctant to investigate," journalist Lewis Brackpool told Blaze News.

"Whilst I don’t like the idea of a sitting member of parliament presenting a news show when their priority is to be serving their constituents, I feel as though the ability to present news and discuss ideas should be upheld. Many viewers who do not want to undermine speech and debate are tired of these nanny-state regulations and would simply like to make their own mind up," Brackpool added.

GB News has doubled down and said that they will remain committed to having serving politicians host programs on their channel.

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Anti-woke, anti-cancel culture comic John Cleese to debut show on TV channel one critic calls the 'British Fox News'



Monty Python's John Cleese — a legendary comic who's become an outspoken opponent of woke culture and cancel culture in recent years — is debuting a TV show in 2023 on a United Kingdom channel that one critic has called the "British Fox News."

What are the details?

Cleese's new show on GB News will be a collaboration with satirist Andrew Doyle that will encourage "proper argument," BBC News reported. Doyle hosts "Free Speech Nation" on the channel, which launched last year, the network said.

Cleese warned GB News watchers that they "may not be used to hearing the sort of things I'll be saying."

Former GB News chairman Andrew Neil told the BBC last year, via the Guardian, that one of the reasons he exited the network was because he didn't want to be a “minority of one” at a “British Fox News.”

Cleese apparently doesn't feel similarly about GB News.

"I was approached [about the new show], and I didn't know who they were," Cleese told BBC News. "I don't know much about modern television because I've pretty much given up on it — English television."

Cleese further explained that he then "met one or two of the people concerned and had a dinner with them, and I liked them very much. And what they said was, 'People say it's a right-wing channel, [but] it's a free-speech channel.'"

GB News launched in June 2021, BBC News said, becoming the U.K.'s first TV news start-up in 30 years.

As for any possibility of returning to the BBC in the future — "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and Cleese's "Fawlty Towers" comedy series are both BBC properties — Cleese told the network, "Not on your nelly."

Why? "Because I wouldn't get five minutes into the first show before I'd been canceled or censored," he told BBC News.

What else has Cleese been up to?

In July, Cleese told an audience at the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas that "woke attitudes" are having a "disastrous effect" on comedy and that he has seen writers and comics censoring themselves over fear of getting canceled.

In November 2021, Cleese actually canceled himself from a speaking gig at Cambridge University after he learned that an art historian at the school had been canceled over an impersonation of Adolf Hitler that reportedly offended students.

In 2020, Cleese ripped keyboard leftists, refusing to bow to them in the wake of their "transphobia" accusations after he signed a letter of solidarity with author J.K. Rowling, who herself has come under fire for statements challenging transgenderism.

"I hope they fry in their own sanctimoniousness and narcissistic posturing," Cleese said of the woke mob. "Until they get a sense of perspective, that is."

Way back in 2016, Cleese declared that political correctness would lead to a "1984" society and cautioned against hypersensitivity to anything and everything deemed hurtful and offensive.

"All humor is critical. If we start saying, 'Oh, we mustn’t criticize or offend them,' then humor is gone, and with humor goes a sense of proportion — and then, as far as I’m concerned, you’re living in '1984,'" Cleese said in a video, referring to George Orwell's classic dystopian novel. "So the idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is one I absolutely do not subscribe to."