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Originally Posted by Chris
Then your beef isn’t with Ofcom but with the very long-standing legislative principles that enable and regulate broadcasting in the UK. Print media is fair game for politically motivated ownership/campaigning; broadcast media is not. Nowhere do the rules restrict their sanctions only to inflammatory opinion-sharing. TV and radio current affairs output is required to be balanced. That means you can get Andrew Neil to host a show in which Ed Balls and George Osborne give their opinions at the same time, or you could have him forensically interview Rishi Sunak one week and Keir Starmer the next; you can even allow him to offer his perspective on the major events of the week, provided that in the round he isn’t obviously favouring one view over another.
What you can’t do is allow a presenter on a channel that has the word ‘news’ in its name to go on a rant in which they attach vaccine side effect statistics to insinuations of a deep state conspiracy, sans evidence. Giving strongly opinionated individuals their own show and making it look like a platform for their opinions is inherently likely to draw Ofcom’s attention. The Tucker Carlson approach to TV ‘news’ simply isn’t allowed in the UK and never has been. GBN is on a sticky wicket if it thinks it can push its output in that direction.
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I agree with most of what you're saying but I thought this part of the article was interesting in terms of political balance.
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Ahead of GB News’ launch last year there had been questions about how Ofcom would regulate a television news channel that was overtly political in its outlook. British broadcasting law requires a commitment to “due impartiality”, which means that an audience must be exposed to alternative points of view. However, a channel can still take a strong editorial line – and does not have to give equal airtime to both sides of a debate.
At first GB News regularly booked left-leaning guests for discussions to ensure they could meet this due impartiality standard. But staff at the station said they did this less once they realised Ofcom was not going to press on the issue.
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