GB News is going from strength to strength – and the media elite are terrified

Its limit is amazing. One of the Grand Old Men of British journalism sits in a BBC studio and criticizes and patronizes a leading broadcaster he doesn’t like. In the establishment media’s favorite port, Andrew Neil appeared on Today this week to take over GB News – the station he helped found three years ago. In the studio it was very matey, everyone on first name terms; This was Andrew and Andrew as Mishal Husain allowed Mr. Neil to vent his spleen. It was a very exciting interview but not, I think, in the way that the BBC and Neil had planned.

You have to wonder why other people hate GB News so much. Is it because they are losing audience share to a competitor? A reasonable suggestion as GBN is gradually increasing its audience. As the UK Press Gazette reported last month: “Year on year, relative newcomer GB News, which launched a dotcom url last year, saw the fastest growth in the top 50. The news brand’s audience increased by 167 percent compared to February. 2023 by 9 million people.”

But, apparently, it’s not the fact that GB News is now ranked 21st in the UK’s top news brands list with an impressive year-on-year growth of 3,515 per cent that worries Mr Neil. He qualified the station’s claim that “Britain is listening” by saying that only “a tiny bit of Britain” listens and watches. It was believed that his anger was provoked by many lively young people who ate his lunch. What really gets Mr Neil’s goat is that there are a number of GB News programs leading the way for MPs. The principle is what you see.

And, putting MPs behind the microphone is a break with British broadcasting tradition – as everyone knows – this is about maintaining state-of-the-art “impartiality”. But the whole concept of media impartiality is phony; it is a Big lie over and over again to make us submit to the attorney. The BBC – and the rest of the media – are no more “impartial” than GB News. It’s just that their preferences and biases are quite different.

The interview with Andrew Neil prompted the announcement by media regulator Ofcom that it was to investigate GB News for breaching the rules surrounding a program in which Rishi Sunak took questions from the public. Ofcom said the programme, known as the Public Forum, broke its rules because the Prime Minister’s answers were not challenged. Clearly, Ofcom’s statement said: “Given that this is a serious and repeated breach of these rules, we are now beginning the process of considering a statutory sanction against GB News.”

This could lead to the end of GB News, as Ofcom has the power to strip it of its broadcasting licence. I doubt they will go that far. It would not look good on Ofcom or British democracy in general to shut down a broadcaster just because it offends the views of a minority – especially not because of a general election. Maybe there will be a fine or maybe GB News will be ordered to stick more closely to how the BBC and the others do it. Which would be a recipe for more bland, middle-of-the-road “consensus broadcasting”. That was a great pity; In my mind, the experiment of using MPs and other politically connected people like Nigel Farage as presenters has been a great success.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, for example, has shown himself to be an extremely intelligent researcher with an understanding of politics and deep historical knowledge that makes his program one of the best ever. It would obviously be better if GB News had some Labor MPs to balance the books but, as station manager Angelos Frangopoulos said: “We are trying very hard to get members from other parties encouraged to come on board and present programs. We’d love to have a wide range of MPs on our channel in the same way that stations like LBC do… It’s an ongoing conversation, but it’s because someone has yet to say yes.”

I wonder why? MPs are usually not shy about making their voice heard. I think GBN is a dirty word on the Left – and in elite circles in general. And the reason for that is simple: GB News is the only broadcaster where you will hear a full-throated challenge to some of today’s mad orthodoxies, like climate change. I have heard, and respect, debates on GBN that have strongly questioned the UK’s Net Zero policies.

For some of us, it seems that this piece of eco-damage could seriously harm the national prosperity. But you won’t be hearing that kind of debate on Today anytime soon. The BBC, the Church’s High Priest of Climate Change, censors heretics. Political naïves might expect Ofcom to be interested in that kind of failure of “impartiality” too – but that would be to misunderstand the regulator, which is a central pillar of the media establishment alongside the BBC.

It was very interesting to hear Mr Neil criticize GB News while also attacking Ofcom itself. The decision to focus on Rishi Sunak’s Q&A program was, according to Neil, like prosecuting Al Capone for tax evasion (a quote he copied from Michael Crick who appeared on Rees Mogg’s program the night before the GBN lambast as ” Right wing propaganda channel”). In other words, GB News’ sins were far greater in other areas.

One had to wonder how much of Mr. Neil’s odium arose because of his connection with GB News as originally thought. He was the first chairman and star presenter at the launch in June 2021. But the relationship became very strained and Neil left GB News trying to find his own voice. Frangopoulos says his mission is to “disrupt” the media scene in the UK and, of course, that’s why he’s so admired.

But Mr Neil said it was all in favor of trouble – but apparently not GB News. He greatly preferred the Sky News model – which he claimed was instrumental in establishing it. But Sky has ceased to be a “disruption” in the same way that Tweedledum has Tweedledee. Its output is now, in terms of content and fundamental worldview, indistinguishable from the BBC.

George Orwell’s timeless parable Animal Farm comes to mind as the revolutionaries shape-shift over time into exact replicas of their original crushes. Andrew Neil has just announced his resignation to join Times Radio – another “disruption” that follows much the same agenda as the BBC, but one that is growing more slowly than GBN.

GB News is not perfect. Some of his coverage is shocking and sometimes ignorant. But its saving grace is that it represents something new, a departure from an old, old, media consensus that rightly censors debate on important topics.

So far, Ofcom has resisted calls from people like Neil to throw regulatory burdens on the newcomer that would keep him safe and look like the others. Anyone who cares about free speech and free debate in a free country must hope that Ofcom takes notice and allows GB News to progress.