Nobody should be surprised by the recent Ofcom decision that GB News has broken its impartiality rules.
This TV regulating quango (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) fits nicely into that new establishment model which knows what’s best for the great British public.
Ofcom concluded that GB News, in its February screening of the one-hour People’s Forum: The Prime Minister, failed to ensure that an appropriately wide range of significant views was given due weight in the programme.
However, the audience was chosen by independent pollsters and 15 of the 16 questions asked were hostile towards Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.
One can only assume Ofcom wanted a more diverse audience with opinions which suit Ofcom's worldview. Either that, or they don't want members of the public challenging politicians directly at all.
A glance at its board and the ruling begins to make sense. Ofcom's hegemony is about maintaining mainstream media bias combined with a big splash of wokeism.
The People's Forum was made up of an independently selected audience
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The board is predominantly former BBC or ITV executives and ex-civil servants.
Its Chief Executive, Melanie Dawes, was Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government whilst the department achieved little. Importantly, she was also Champion for Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion - which roughly translates into prefect for rainbow lanyards.
When Laurence Fox made crass comments on GB News last September, for which he was rightly fired, we saw one mainstream media commentator after another come out calling for the station to be closed.
As though presenters on mainstream stations haven't made on-air gaffs, it showed the real agenda is about stopping a fledgling broadcaster which doesn't fit the new establishment consensus.
Ofcom talks of 547 people complaining about the People's Forum programme, and more complaining about other aspects of GB News broadcasting, as though they are unaware of a concerted effort by left-of-centre activists to try and shut the channel down.
This campaign against GB News continues whilst the BBC can't bring itself to describe Hamas as terrorists and it's just described the death of President Ebrahim Raisi, who was commonly known as the ˜Butcher of Tehran" as leaving a "mixed legacy in Iran".
Add to this, ITV's significant failures around duty of care to contestants and participants in some of its shows, or Sky News' inability to even muster an audience and one is left wondering where the real problems lie in British broadcast media.
READ MORE OPINION:
GB News has hit back at Ofcom's ruling over the People's Forum programme in February
GB NEWS
The truth is that many mainstream broadcasters and politicians don't like how GB News is appealing to British voters, how it's winning hearts and minds by speaking truth to power.
The biggest truth of all is that this establishment don't like how GB News is getting more and more viewers, how it is taking market share and how it's a genuine voice for free speech.
Michael Grade, the former boss of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, and now chairman of Ofcom, recently said in a Sunday Times interview: I'm very surprised at the number of journalists who spend their lives defending freedom of expression and are kind of telling us we should close down GB News. I mean, how does that square with freedom of expression?
Michael is absolutely right, though one fears he's losing the battle not just within Ofcom, but also amongst a broadcasting and political class which wants GB News gone.
