GB News goes from strength to strength and media elites are horrified

The sheer audacity of this is astounding. One of the Grand Old Men of British journalism sits in a BBC studio, condemning and patronizing a fledgling broadcaster he disapproves of. Andrew Neil appeared on Today this week in what has become the establishment media’s favorite tune, giving him an advantage over GB News, the station he helped launch three years ago. Everything was very friendly in the studio, everyone spoke by first name; It was Andrew, and so was Andrew, as Mishal Husain gave Mr. Neil a free hand to drain his spleen. It was a very revealing interview, but I guess not in the way the BBC and Neil intended.

You have to wonder why others’ hatred for GB News is so bitter. Because they lost audience share to a competitor? It’s a reasonable suggestion because GBN is rapidly increasing its audience. As the UK Press Gazette reported last month: “Relative newcomer GB News, which launched a dotcom URL last year, has seen the fastest growth in the top 50. The news brand’s audience numbers are up 167 per cent from February. 9 in 2023 million people.”

But it seems Mr Neil’s concern isn’t that GB News is currently ranked 21st in the list of top news brands in the UK, with a staggering 3,515 per cent annual growth. He adapted the station’s claim that “Britain is listening” by saying that whoever listens and watches is “only a tiny part of Britain”. Dispel the thought that his anger was sparked by an energetic young contestant eating his lunch. What really caught Mr Neil’s attention was that some UK News programs catered to Conservative MPs. That’s the principle of what you see.

And putting MPs behind the microphone means – as everyone knows – a break with the British broadcasting tradition, which is all about maintaining pure “impartiality”. But the whole concept of media impartiality is false; This is a Big Lie that is repeated over and over again to intimidate us into submission. The BBC and the rest of the media are no more ‘impartial’ than GB News. It’s just that their preferences and prejudices are quite different.

The interview with Andrew Neil was sparked by action as media regulator Ofcom announced it would investigate GB News for breaches of rules on a program in which Rishi Sunak took questions from the public. Ofcom said the programme, called the People’s Forum, had broken its rules by failing to challenge the Prime Minister’s responses. Ofcom’s statement notably stated: “Given that this represents a serious and repeated breach of these rules, we are now initiating the process of considering legal action against GB News.”

This could mean the end of GB News as Ofcom has the power to strip it of its broadcasting licence. I doubt they’ll go that far. Shutting down a broadcaster simply because it offends the views of elites would not be a good look for either Ofcom or British democracy generally; especially as the general election approaches. Maybe there will be a fine, or maybe GB News will be instructed to more closely match what the BBC and others are doing. This would be the recipe for a softer, middle-of-the-road, “consensus-based publication.” That would be a shame; The experience of using MPs and others interested in politics, such as Nigel Farage, as presenters has been a huge success in my opinion.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, for example, has shown himself to be a highly intelligent and highly brilliant inquisitor whose understanding of politics and deep knowledge of history consistently make his program one of the best. It would certainly be better if GB News had some Labor MPs to balance the books, but as the station’s boss Angelos Frangopoulos said: “We are trying hard to encourage members of other parties to participate and present programmes. “We would like to have a broad range of MPs on our channel, as stations like LBC do… It’s an ongoing conversation, but that’s because we haven’t yet found anyone to say yes.”

I wonder why? MPs generally do not hesitate to make their voices heard. I think this is because GBN has become a dirty word on the Left and in elite circles more generally. And the reason is simple: GB News is the only broadcaster where you’ll hear all-out challenges to some of today’s crazy orthodoxies, like climate change. I have heard and been fascinated by the debates about the GBN, which strongly question the UK’s Net Zero policies.

For some of us, it is beginning to look like this eco-zealotry will do great harm to national well-being. But you won’t hear this kind of debate on Today any time soon. High Priest of the Church of Climate Change BBC censors heretics. A political purist might expect Ofcom to also be concerned with such a failure of “neutrality”; but that would be to misunderstand the regulator who is a pillar of the media organisation, as well as the BBC.

It was fascinating to see Mr Neil vindicate his criticisms of GB News while also attacking Ofcom. Neil said the decision to focus on the Rishi Sunak Q&A was akin to suing Al Capone for tax evasion (he copied the insult from Michael Crick, who had criticized GBN as “Right Wing” on Rees Mogg’s show the night before). propaganda channel”). So GB News’ sins were much greater in other areas.

One had to wonder how much of Mr Neil’s odium arose because of his connection to GB News as originally conceived. He was its first president and star emcee at its launch in June 2021. But the relationship quickly soured and Neil left as GB News struggled to find its own voice. Frangopoulos says his mission is to “disrupt” the UK media scene, and of course that’s why he’s so resentful.

But Mr. Neil said that he was all for the disruptors; but apparently not like GB News. He much preferred the Sky News model, which he credited with being instrumental in its founding. But Sky turned out to be a “disruptor” in the same way that Tweedledum was to Tweedledee. Its output is now indistinguishable from the BBC in terms of content and fundamental worldview.

I am reminded of George Orwell’s timeless Animal Farm analogy, in which revolutionaries shapeshift over time into exact replicas of their original oppressors. Meanwhile, Andrew Neil has announced he is leaving to join Times Radio; Another “disruptor” that follows much the same agenda as the BBC but grows more slowly than GBN.

GB News is not perfect. Some of the coverage is shouty and sometimes downright ignorant. But its saving grace is that it represents something new, a break from the old, stale media consensus that censored proper discussion about important issues.

So far Ofcom has resisted calls from people like Neil to hobble the newcomer with regulatory obligations that would make it more like the others and entrench it. For anyone who cares about freedom of expression and free debate in a free country, one must hope that Ofcom does not lose heart and allow GB News to thrive.