GB News repeatedly breached impartiality rules by allowing Conservative MPs to serve as news presenters – but will not face any sanctions from Ofcom.
The broadcast regulator concluded that the channel broke rules banning politicians from acting as newsreaders on five occasions involving the MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey and Philip Davies.
The trio are part of a growing cast of serving Tory MPs who have second jobs working as presenters on the increasingly influential news service. Rees-Mogg makes £350,000 a year for his nightly programme on GB News, while the married couple McVey and Davies have together earned £190,000 from the channel in the last year.
Ofcom said GB News’s decision to use the MPs to present breaking news coverage risked undermining the high public trust in regulated broadcast media.
It concluded: “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.”
Rather than punish GB News, which has repeatedly tested the limits of what is possible under British broadcasting rules, the media regulator has warned the channel not to break its rules again.
This is the 12th time GB News has breached the broadcasting code in its short existence and it has yet to face a formal sanction. Eight other investigations are ongoing.
GB News said the latest ruling was a “chilling development for all broadcasters, for freedom of speech, and for everyone in the United Kingdom”, and it pledged to take the fight to Ofcom.
“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 programme aired, contravene those duties,” it said.
The channel unsuccessfully argued that the broadcasts did not break the rules because the politicians were not pretending to be impartial hosts of “news” programmes but were instead the openly opinionated presenters of “current affairs” programmes.
The difference between news and current affairs can be hard to define but they are treated in different ways by the broadcasting rules.
The channel’s bosses unsuccessfully argued that Ofcom’s interpretation of the rules was unfair and dangerous.
GB News invoked past rulings by the European court of human rights protecting freedom of expression and said the distinction between news and non-news was “less clearcut” than acknowledged by Ofcom.
Ofcom concluded that the five occasions on which its ban on politicians presenting news coverage was breached were:
Rees-Mogg presenting news coverage as a jury returned its verdict in Donald Trump’s rape trial.
McVey and Davies interviewing GB News reporters about rail strikes and Prince Harry’s phone hacking court cases, including offering their personal opinions on the stories.
McVey and Davies interviewing the Reform party’s London mayoral candidate, Howard Cox, live from the location of a demonstration against the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone. The interview ended with McVey praising Cox for “starting the fightback for the motorist”.
Rees-Mogg hosting an interview with a GB News reporter about murders in Nottingham.
McVey and Davies conducting an interview with a GB News reporter about the jump in mortgage rates and the Tory government’s response, praising the reporter for calling out the “mistakes that the Bank of England were making”.
It cleared GB News of a potential sixth breach of the rules relating to the use of Rees-Mogg as an on-the-ground reporter in parliament during a security alert.
Ofcom said its rules were intended to maintain “fair and equal democratic discourse on influential media platforms to the benefit of society generally”, protecting audiences from harmful partial broadcast news and ensuring that viewers received a range of viewpoints so they could engage “on an informed basis in democratic processes”.
It said: “In our view, the use of politicians to present the news risks undermining the integrity and credibility of regulated broadcast news.”
Ofcom said it had not had any reason to investigate GB News for further breaches of the rule banning politicians acting as news presenters since this glut of cases was reported last summer. As a result, it has not imposed a formal punishment but instead warned GB News that it will not be as forgiving in the future.
Last week two former Ofcom employees, Stewart Purvis and Chris Banatvala, wrote in the Guardian about the lack of formal enforcement action against GB News, concluding that Ofcom was “apparently unwilling to uphold impartiality – all in the name of freedom of expression and audience expectations”.
They warned that the issue would only become more toxic as the general election approached.
