Good evening and welcome to this week's Media Watch where a months-long drama involving GB News has finally come to a conclusion ... for now anyway.
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GB News saga ends in fine
You’ll have read a few times in this newsletter about Ofcom’s investigation into GB News after the airing of a programme where then-prime minister Rishi Sunak answered questions from a studio audience and presenter.
The probe into the programme entitled People’s Forum: The Prime Minister – which aired in February – has now ended in a £100,000 fine for the channel for “breaking impartiality rules”.
The regulator said Sunak had a “mostly uncontested” platform to promote “the policies and performance of his government” in a period preceding the General Election.
However, the episode may not be over, as GB News is challenging the decision and Ofcom will not enforce the sanction until those proceedings are closed.
GB News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos said the sanctions are “unnecessary, unfair and unlawful” and a “direct attack on free speech and journalism”.
In February, Ofcom said that it received 547 complaints about the hour-long programme and that it found that the programme had not “challenged (Sunak) or otherwise referred to significant alternative views”, and that GB News should have “taken additional steps” to ensure impartiality.
Isabel takes an Oakeshott at benefit claimants
From GB News to TalkTV and a certain Isabel Oakeshott (below) who claimed on the channel that benefit claimants are “parasites”.
The former Sunday Times political editor said the people who benefit from Rachel Reeves’s Budget announced last week are the “people who do the least, so basically benefits claimants”.
But the Budget announcement also included an apparent confirmation that the Government will continue with reforms to the work capability assessment set out by the Conservatives, restricting eligibility so hundreds of thousands of people with health conditions will miss out on support in the coming years.
Reeves also pledged to crackdown on welfare fraud, including through “access to bank accounts”.
But for Oakeshott, it seemed this was simply not enough of a “crackdown” as she went on a undignified rant about disabled people taking “everything the state can offer”.
On TalkTV, she said: “How many young people are supposedly too sick to work and being supported by the state?
“These figures are absolutely off the chart, and they are completely unjustified.
“By not announcing such a crackdown, Rachel Reeves basically turned this into a Budget of removing resources from those who work in order to keep on sustaining those who, frankly, can't be bothered to get out of bed and get themselves out, whether it's to an office or to any kind of job, and prefer to just sit on the sofa and order their Deliveroo and drive their Motability free vehicle and take everything that the state can offer.
“Basically these people are, frankly, parasites.”
Oakeshott was condemned by disability equality charity Scope, which said the comments were “utterly disgraceful” and her views belonged “in the past”.
