Abstract
The channel that liberals love to loathe is finding a growing audience among members of the Conservative Party. What do they see in it?
When I saw GB News’ claims of being the “fastest growing” broadcast outlet for 2023, my curiosity was aroused. How had I missed the rapid expansion of a provider that boasts bringing the news “as it breaks… giving our own view and how it matters to you”? In an update on January 5, before I could get to grips with a news service to which I had given scant attention, Barb – a reliable broadcast data body – announced that GB’s achievement in hitting the one million viewer mark as New Year’s Eve turned into the fledgling 2024 might not have been accurate.
How so? Barb revealed data covering the period when several broadcasters were screening the New Year’s Eve fireworks from London might not be correct in the way the information was measured. “As a result,” Barb announced, “some viewing that should have been attributed to BBC One and other channels may have gone to GB News.”
Not earth-shattering stuff, I agree, especially as Barb promised to amend any inaccurate data as soon as their investigation is complete, but the emergence of GB News in my consciousness excited me. I switched on to discover not only the station’s own view but also how it matters to me.
I found a report on an on-call firefighter father of three who had been training with weights twice a day, including Christmas Day, to raise money for The Fire Fighters Charity and a former colleague. As much as I admired the firefighter’s rippling muscles, I couldn’t see how it mattered to me, but could only assume the comment of the lady news anchor was official. “Blimey O’Riley,” she said.
I persevered. A panel comment show with guests – a formula used in many areas of GB – was helmed by Michelle Dewberry, a conservative journalist whose politics on the channel are described by management as “right-leaning on political issues”. Dewberry won the second series of the TV reality show The Apprentice but now, it seemed, was in the business of metaphorically kicking various public figures.
Sir Keir Starmer, for example, for being Labour Party leader; the Duke of York, for obvious reasons; Fraser Nelson, for not agreeing totally with something he had written for the magazine he edits, The Spectator; the mayor of London, possibly for being short; and immigrants, of course, particularly – but not wholly – those of the illegal variety.
Politicians with the temerity to be out of favour with GB News, or those not leaning far enough to the right, come in for some sniping, although it struck me not to be as vindictive as that directed at lefties. Or, indeed, at a Liberal Democrat such as Sir Ed Davey, perceived to be inept over the Post Office scandal when serving as Post Office minister during David Cameron’s coalition government.
The contracted journalists pumping out propaganda and the panel members happy to follow their lead are presumably honestly expressing their political views and social complaints. Those with contrary views are, it seems, free to express them. Sometimes opinions clash but without noticeable rancour, as when the veteran political journalist Nigel Nelson – political editor of a paper I edited in the distant past – swapped opinions with his fellow guest Claire Pearsall, a former Tory adviser who happens to be Nelson’s wife. Nelson and Pearsall agreed to disagree, which might have had something to do with this being their wedding anniversary.
Other contributors, more strident in their opinions and their method of expressing them, include the former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, whose political views are no secret, and Toby Young, the controversial and conservative social commentator and director of the Free Speech Union, under which title he broadcasts. Mark Dolan, a comedian and TV host for several different channels, is just one of the in-house panel show right-wing personalities who push high Tory dogma and a monologue called The Big Interview while involving studio guests. Dawn Neesom, the former editor of the red-top Daily Star, is another.
During my vigilance of GB News, Dolan talked of having upset Nigel Farage, arguably the channel’s main attraction since the media giant Andrew Neil bailed out not long after launch. Within my listening hours, Dolan did not specify what had left Farage less than gruntled, but instead the presenter referred incessantly to his colleague in glowing terms: he was a good friend, said Dolan, and variously a wonderful guy, a fabulous guy, a great guy and a respected colleague.
What I concluded after several hours was that, as in most pyramid management organisations, the higher one climbed, the more skilful were the practitioners. Love him or not, Farage knows his way around an argument and appears to have taken at least a BA in persuasion. The same is true of Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, lacking the pint-of-beer cheeriness of Farage but maintaining his upper-class credentials without offence. Who else could close a between-ads segment of his show by announcing, apropos of very little, that he knows only two words of Serbo-Croat, which translate as “old bean”.
There have been casualties among the journalists bringing their own take on news since GB News launched in June 2021. The most celebrated are arguably the former Sun showbusiness reporter Dan Wootton and the actor Laurence Fox, a member of the well-known Fox showbiz family and founder of the Reclaim right-wing political party. In November last year, the company suspended them both and instigated an investigation into them broadcasting “totally unacceptable” misogynistic comments about a female journalist. Fox was subsequently sacked and Wootton suspended after losing a column he was writing for MailOnline.
Ofcom takes fright at Tories interviewing Tories
Ofcom has been kept busy during the channel’s short life, including investigations into potential beaches of impartiality. Last year, GB News listed a programme hosted by two Conservative MPs, Esther McVey and Philip Davies, who interviewed another Tory MP, Jeremy Hunt. Ofcom found that it was in breach of its regulations. As if.
It gives airtime to those who do not sympathise with politics that generally find favour with only those on the extreme right wing of the Conservative Party; the party-supporting blog ConservativeHome claims it has settled somewhere to the left of Reform UK – initially founded by Farage as the Brexit Party – but well to the right of the Conservative parliamentary party. Certainly, Reform might be seen to be more influential at GB News following the arrival last September of businessman and the party’s leader, Richard Tice, as a presenter.
ConservativeHome believes that’s a political field where a lot of its readers and viewers, “not to mention our panel of Tory members”, bask. More than half of them now watch the GB News channel. No surprise, either, that while GB News does appear to offer partiality in some of its panel discussions and vox pop interviews (usually briefly approaching four or five members of the public and giving only percentages of the favourable views obtained), it knows well its hinterland and the folk who inhabit it.
Yet politicians and journalists continue to take part in what is basically a one-way street, perhaps because even if their views are not listened to, they are unlikely to find the games controlled by house players, like bad-guy cardsharps rigging the pack in old Western movies.
Investigative journalist Michael Crick is one of those determined to be heard, having been temporarily suspended by the channel after delivering a scalding message when discussing freedom of speech on a GB News show: “I’ve been fighting bias in television in a very long time… I think Ofcom, which is one of the weakest institutions on the planet, should get a grip on you lot. It’s absurd that you have Tory MP after Tory MP, two leaders of the Brexit Party [as hosts] and hardly any Labour MPs. You are a right-wing channel and the rules in this country are very clear.”
Crick says today: “That incident was a cock-up for which GB News apologised almost immediately. I have said six times, I think, in their studios that they should be closed down by Ofcom.”
So, back after only a brief break, Crick presses on. Can he and his like-minded guests succeed in getting partiality recognised? Ofcom, who’s running the game?
