One day all media outlets will be grateful for the free speech GB News is defending - Kevin Foster
GB News
OPINION - Kevin Foster was Conservative MP for Torbay from 2015 to 2024.
It’s always been fashionable amongst those who don’t like a message to blame the messenger.
They ignore or patronise an employee who has the bravery to tell senior management things are running downhill. They dismiss the whistleblower trying to raise the alarm, simply because what they have to say is an uncomfortable truth.
For some it is better to just dismiss uncomfortable truths and only watch media which confirms their views. They think any challenge to their views must be a sign of innate bias, a voice to be silenced and ignored.
GB News viewers should be under no illusion there are those who want to do this to us.
Those who once told jokes about the early rating figures and pushed big advertisers keen to show their “diverse” credentials not to advertise on GB News are getting worried. They see GB News' rating figures growing.
They hear their friends and neighbours say how they enjoy hearing Jacob’s analysis, debates on Dewbs & Co, watching Lee put the world to rights over a pint and seeing Free Speech Nation platform those others want to silence.
'This can’t be right' they say to themselves. 'How can this be happening?' they ask. Will they realise other mainstream media outlets should now engage with those they have ignored in the past, who are now getting to hear their thoughts and opinions debated?
Will they demand the wider media holds to account an MP who thinks its right to insist cousin marriage is respected, whilst dismissing Britain's wildly negative view of the custom?
It is time more journalists ask all those left-wing campaigners out on the streets each week why there is a Pride Campaign for Palestine but no prospect of a Pride Campaign in Palestine.
No. They are the same people who dismissed the first warnings of grooming gangs as racist and belittled JK Rowling for pointing out the dangers to women from extreme self-id legislation which would allow male sex offenders into women’s prisons.
When the challenge is hard, they believe the answer is simply to shoot the messenger, hence the recent attacks on GB News.
Britain’s news channel was criticised by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CMM) as having an “obsession” and accounting for “50% of mentions of Muslims” on broadcast media.
The self-appointed watchdog complained OFCOM should do its job and “regulate the channel”, in other words GB News should only say things CMM agrees with and feels comfortable hearing.
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The CMM complains GB News “rarely features Muslim perspectives”, which will be news to many who regularly hear the thoughts of Zia Yusuf on GB News.
Yet someone who describes himself as a “British Muslim patriot” shatters, rather than shares, the “perspectives” CMM are referring to.
They don’t want to hear from someone who has succeeded and taken the opportunities given to him by this country, they just want the victim-based narrative and doing-down of our great country beloved of socialists.
In these days of multi-channel TV and digital output, no-one is forced to watch GB News. If you can’t handle the determination for free speech and to examine issues, then watch another station.
Yet we must not allow this to be silenced. After OFCOM’s embarrassing performance over GB News giving real people the chance to question then PM Rishi Sunak, its time for them to stop listening to the siren voices of the “no platform” brigade.
One day all media outlets will be grateful for the free speech GB News is defending.