Ofcom wrote:
People's Forum: The Prime Minister
GB News, 12 February 2024, 20:00
Ofcom received 547 complaints about this live, hour-long current affairs programme which featured the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, in a
question-and-answer session with a studio audience about the Government's policies and performance, in the context of the forthcoming UK General Election.
We considered that this constituted a matter of major political controversy
and a major matter relating to current public policy. When covering major matters, all Ofcom licensees must comply with the heightened special impartiality requirements in the Code. These rules require broadcasters to include and give due weight to an
appropriately wide range of significant views within a programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes.
Ofcom had no issue with this programme's format in principle. Broadcasters have freedom to decide the editorial approach
of their programmes as long as they comply with the Code. We took into account factors such as: the audience's questions to the Prime Minister; his responses; the Presenter's contribution; and whether due impartiality was preserved through clearly linked
and timely programmes. In this case:
While some of the audience's questions provided some challenge to, and criticism of, the Government's policies and performance, audience members were not able to challenge the Prime Minister's responses and the Presenter did not
do this to any meaningful extent.
The Prime Minister was able to set out some future policies that his Government planned to implement, if re-elected in the forthcoming UK General Election. Neither the audience or the
Presenter challenged or otherwise referred to significant alternative views on these.
The Prime Minister criticised aspects of the Labour Party's policies and performance. While politicians are of course able to do this in
programmes, licensees must ensure that due impartiality is preserved. Neither the Labour Party's views or positions on those issues, or any other significant views on those issues were included in the programme or given due weight.
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The Licensee did not, and was not able to, include a reference in the programme to an agreed future programme in which an appropriately wide range of significant views on the major matter would be presented and given due weight.
We found that an appropriately wide range of significant viewpoints was not presented and given due weight in this case. As a result, Rishi Sunak had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his
Government in a period preceding a UK General Election.
GB News failed to preserve due impartiality, in breach of Rules 5.11 and 5.12 of the Code. Our decision is that this breach was serious and repeated.
We will therefore consider this breach for the imposition of a statutory sanction
Update: GB News to challege Ofcom's censorship in the courts
21st May 2024. See
article from pressgazette.co.uk
A GB News spokesperson responded to the Ofcom censorship:
GB News has begun the formal legal process of challenging recent Ofcom decisions which go against journalists' and broadcasters' rights to make their own editorial judgements in line with the law and which also go against Ofcom's own rules.
Ofcom is obliged by law to uphold freedom of expression. Ofcom is also obliged to apply its rules fairly and lawfully. We believe that, for some time now, Ofcom has been operating in the exact opposite manner.
We cannot allow freedom of expression and media freedom to be trampled on in this way.
Freedom of the press is a civil right established by the British in the seventeenth century with the abolition of censorship and licensing of the printing press.
We refuse to stand by and allow this right
to be threatened. As the People's Channel we champion this freedom; for our viewers, for our listeners, for everyone in the United Kingdom.
Ofsite Comment: Ofcom's contempt for GB News viewers
21st May 2024. See article from spiked-online.com by Andrew Tettenborn
How, you might ask, could a show featuring independently selected, non-aligned voters directly quizzing an embattled PM breach impartiality rules? The Ofcom ruling makes no sense, at least if you look at it from the perspective of the average,
level-headed man or woman in the street. But then, the apparatchiks who run Ofcom are neither particularly level-headed nor remotely reflective of the average voter.
See
article from spiked-online.com
Ofsite Comment: The real reason Ofcom has gone after GB
News
27th May 2024. See article from spectator.co.uk by Toby Young
