GB News says it has “begun the formal legal process of challenging” recent Ofcom rulings finding it has repeatedly breached the Broadcasting Code.
The broadcaster declined to go into further detail about what that legal challenge involves. (Find its full statement below.)
The last major broadcaster to take Ofcom to the courts was RT, which several years ago challenged Ofcom with a claim for judicial review at the High Court after being fined over a ruling that it failed to preserve due impartiality in seven news and current affairs programmes over a six-week period. The Russian broadcaster, which has since had its UK licence revoked by Ofcom, failed in its claim at both the High Court and Court of Appeal.
Ofcom criticised RT for “serious and repeated failures” to report with due impartiality – the same wording it used about GB News this week.
The broadcast regulator said on Monday it was considering a statutory sanction, which could include a financial penalty, after “serious and repeated” breaches of due impartiality rules.
The latest case involved People’s Forum: The Prime Minister, a live audience Q&A with Rishi Sunak that Ofcom said gave him a “mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his Government in a period preceding a UK General Election”.
GB News criticised Ofcom’s ruling in strong terms, saying the “threat to punish a news organisation with sanctions for enabling people to challenge their own prime minister strikes at the heart of democracy at a time when it could not be more vital”.
Two months earlier Ofcom ruled five GB News programme presented by Conservative MPs breached due impartiality rules as none of them had “exceptional justification” for acting as politicians newsreaders or reporters “in sequences which clearly constituted news”.
Last year Ofcom rapped GB News after sitting Conservative MPs Esther McVey and Philip Davies interviewed Chancellor Jeremy Hunt days before the Spring Budget and Martin Daubney and Richard Tice discussed immigration policy without presenting enough alternative views.
In March, Ofcom said it had “significant concerns” about the editorial control GB News had over its live output after ruling that former host Laurence Fox made “unambiguously misogynistic” comments about a female journalist on Dan Wootton’s show in September.
GB News statement about Ofcom legal challenge in full
A GB News spokesperson said on Wednesday afternoon: “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.”
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
