Ofcom launches 4 new investigations into GB News programmes over due impartiality

Ofcom has launched 4 investigations into GB News’s compliance with due impartiality guidelines.

The media regulator mentioned it’s trying into episodes of three programmes hosted by politicans, below its rule that politicians should not act as newsreaders, interviewers or reporters “unless exceptionally it is editorially justified”.

It brings the overall variety of lively investigations into the broadcaster as much as seven, after one other three have been launched earlier this 12 months.

The new investigations embody a June episode of Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State Of The Nation present and two May episodes of the present hosted by Esther McVey and Philip Davies – Conservative MPs for Tatton and Shipley respectively – one in every of which included an interview with Reform UK’s London mayoral election candidate, Howard Cox.

The latter is being investigated for compliance to a regulation that requires “news, in whatever form, must be presented with due impartiality”.

Ofcom mentioned additionally it is investigating an episode of actor and right-wing political activist Laurence Fox, which was guest-presented by Martin Daubney – former Brexit Party member of the European Parliament – on 16 June and featured an interview with Richard Tice, the chief of Reform UK.

This programme is being investigated below laws that state due impartiality “is preserved on matters of major political or industrial controversy or those relating to current public policy, and that an appropriately wide range of significant views are included and given due weight”.

It comes months after Adam Baxter, director of broadcasting requirements at Ofcom, mentioned that will probably be trying into GB News to see if the broadcaster is “behaving itself” following the channel breaching its broadcasting code with COVID claims for the second time.

Another episode of Sir Jacob’s show can also be being investigated after it obtained 40 complaints objecting to the MP for North East Somerset appearing as a newsreader.

In July, one other investigation was launched following a GB News marketing campaign that referred to as on the federal government to introduce legal guidelines to “protect the status of cash,” which, below Ofcom guidelines, excludes broadcasters from expressing views on “political and industrial controversy or current public policy”.

GB News declined to touch upon any ongoing investigations.