GB News has defended its right to ask tough questions on controversial subjects after Ofcom ruled an edition of former presenter Mark Steyn's programme breached the broadcasting code.
The regulator found the show should have provided “an adequate counterweight” to Mr Steyn's interpretation of the government’s health data about the risks of a third Covid-19 booster.
In a statement today, Ofcom agreed GB News had the freedom to exercise a robust challenge to ‘mainstream narratives’ from the government about vaccination.
However, it criticised Mr Steyn for presenting only his own conclusions from the data about hospitalisations and deaths, without allowing “sufficient challenge” from others who would disagree with his view. It found that without this, audiences could be misled.
It is the first time Ofcom has made a finding against the channel’s television licence since it started broadcasting 20 months ago. Ofcom received four complaints about the programme and did not impose a fine or any other sanction on GB News.
A GB News spokeswoman said: "We are disappointed by Ofcom’s finding. Our role in media is to ask tough questions, point out inconsistencies in government policy, and hold public bodies to account when the facts justify it.
"Mark Steyn’s programme did exactly that. We support his right to challenge the status quo by examining the small but evident risks of Covid vaccines.”
She added that last week’s release of WhatsApp messages about the way the government handled the pandemic made it clear that GB News was ahead of its time in interrogating the truth about deaths and hospitalisations.
It is the first time Ofcom has made a finding against the channel’s television licence since it started broadcasting 20 months ago.
GB News
"As revelations in the last week have highlighted, it was prescient to question whether the government was candid with all the facts. It is an important story in the public interest."
The UK government has added Covid-19 vaccines to its Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme. The policy allows those severely disabled - or relatives of those killed - by vaccines to claim compensation in a one-off tax-free payment of £120,000. So far officials have paid out nearly £4 million in Covid vaccine damages as a result of deaths or injuries caused by the jab.
In the broadcast found to have breached the code, Mr Steyn looked at evidence from the government’s own health data.
The GB News spokeswoman added: "He drew a reasonable conclusion from the facts. However, he drew only one conclusion.
"We accept that the data offered several valid interpretations, and he should have made this clear. Had he done so, the story would have remained within the wide freedoms that Ofcom’s Broadcast Code allows.
"GB News chose to work in a regulated environment and we take Ofcom compliance seriously. In our 20 months and more than 11,000 hours of live broadcasting, this is Ofcom’s only finding against our television licence. It has not imposed a sanction."
She added: "It remains our mission to challenge anyone who adopts a purely binary position on unfolding news events; their assumption that a government’s narrative is the only legitimate version of events, and that everything else is ‘misinformation’.
"We are committed to balancing this with the regulatory environment we elected to join."
Mark Steyn has left GB News and has not broadcast on the channel for three months.
Ofcom stated they were alerted to this content - which it found was taken out of context - by four complaints from viewers watching Mr Steyn's programme.
It stated that "the screenshots of the tables included in this programme did not include this contextual information, nor did Mark Steyn make any reference to it."
The Ofcom ruling concluded: "We have been consistently clear that, under our rules, broadcasters are free to transmit programmes which may be considered controversial and challenging, or which question statistics or other evidence produced by governments or other official sources.
“It can clearly be in the public interest to do so. However, with this editorial freedom comes an obligation to ensure that, when portraying factual matters, audiences are not materially misled.
“In this case, our investigation found that an episode of the Mark Steyn programme fell short of these standards – not because it exercised its editorial freedom to challenge mainstream narratives around Covid-19 vaccination – but because, in doing so, it presented a materially misleading interpretation of official data without sufficient challenge or counterweight, risking harm to viewers.
Ofcom received four complaints about the programme and did not impose a fine or any other sanction on GB News
GB News
“Specifically, the programme incorrectly claimed that official UKHSA data provided definitive evidence of a causal link between receiving a third Covid-19 vaccine and higher infection, hospitalisation and death rates.
“This was materially misleading because the way the data was presented to viewers during the programme did not take account of the significant differences in age or health of people in the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups studied. We also took into account the definitive way in which the misleading interpretation of the data was presented, and the absence of adequate counterweight or genuine challenge.
“The programme also failed to reflect that the UKHSA reports made clear that the raw data contained within them should not be used to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the vaccine.
“Given these misleading claims were broadcast as part of a factual programme on a news and current affairs service and may have resulted in viewers making important decisions about their own health, we concluded that the programme was potentially harmful and materially misleading, in breach of Rule 2.2 of the Broadcasting Code."