Ofcom boss: ‘We don’t judge GB News, but we do judge its programmes’

In brief...

• GB News has faced criticism for its opinion-led broadcasts and employing sitting Tory MPs, resulting in 19 Ofcom investigations and 12 breaches of broadcasting rules.
• Ofcom's chief executive, Melanie Dawes, warned of potential sanctions against GB News for continued breaches.
• GB News reaches 2.87 million viewers monthly, with Ofcom balancing complaints against the channel with the need to avoid censorship.

Melanie Dawes, chief executive of Ofcom, the UK’s broadcasting regulator. has told The News Agents that if GB News persists with breaches, it will face sanctions in the future, likely hefty fines.

“We are now moving to considering sanctions,” she tells Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel.

Since its launch in 2021, GB News has faced 19 investigations into the channel’s output, which found 12 breaches of Ofcom’s code covering accuracy and impartiality in news broadcasts.

The controversial news and opinion-led channel has so far escaped with nothing more than a slap on the wrist from Ofcom.

“Just to be really clear, though, whether it's GB news or any other broadcasters being found in breach by Ofcom of the broadcasting code, it is very serious, and it is taken extremely seriously by them.”

Some of the claims against GB News, which Ofcom cleared, include discussions on whether Covid-19 vaccinations had caused “turbo-cancer”, and five instances of hiring Conservative MPs as hosts.

It is against the law for sitting politicians to present the news, and on GB News instead present discussion shows.

“What we want to do is to see broadcasters able to innovate, able to have creative freedom of expression, which is an incredibly important part of our democracy, but also following the rules, and that's what we're looking towards in the future,” Dawes adds, defending Ofcom’s decisions.

“The track record of Ofcom here has been very determined: 19 investigations, 12 breaches, and we are now moving to sanction. We are now moving to considering sanctions.”

Dawes claims that Ofcom research of TV viewers found that they were often “uncomfortable” seeing politicians present current affairs shows, but did not want them banned.

But, as Jon Sopel asks, does the name of the channel not suggest it might all be news content?

“Well, that's just the name,” Dawes responds.

“What we judge is the actual programs. I just think we need to get some of this in perspective, this is a channel with a relatively small and loyal audience who actually quite like that opinion-based programming, for some of the same reasons I think that people are increasingly turning to podcasts.”

At the end of 2023, GB News was estimated to be reaching 2.87 million viewers a month, trailing Sky News’s 8.5 million and the BBC’s 11.4 million.

There has been backlash to some of the content, comments and guests seen on GB News on social media, but Dawes says that some of the calls Ofcom faces to address the channel are “draconian”.

“We're going to carry on doing this as we always have done, whether it's Love Island, or GB News,” she says.

“If people make complaints to us, we will investigate them, but we are always weighing freedom of expression into the debate. We have to do that by law, and rightly so.

“Sometimes people forget that, and want us to intervene in a way that I would say starts to border on censorship, if I'm truly honest.”

She also claims that the UK’s real issue with information comes from social media, where people may not get the full picture of what was broadcast in its entirety.

She says conversations with social media companies about “more accountability and more transparency” will begin in the autumn, where the priority will be to tackle the widespread availability of porn on public social media sites, as well as growing online violence against women and girls.

Listen to the interview in full on The News Agents.