It has happened gradually, almost unnoticed. Britain now has a television channel that looks, sounds and behaves less like a broadcaster and more like a political platform. Or, as one journalist has put it: ‘Reform TV’.
That’s not a passing dig from a left-wing commentator. It comes from Andrew Neil, who helped launch GB News in 2021. He told a recent investigation that staff have “turned GB News into the Reform channel”. It is a striking admission from someone who was there at the start.
The investigation itself – reported in New World and led by former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger – went further. A team of 20 experienced journalists reviewed hours of GB News output and scored programmes for compliance with Ofcom’s broadcasting code. The results were not marginal. The average score was just 1.5 out of 5. Some programmes scored zero.
The findings were consistent: challenge was weak or absent, factual inaccuracies were left uncorrected and there was a steady alignment with the agenda of Reform UK. This was not occasional bias or editorial slant. It was structural.
And yet, Ofcom has, so far, done very little.
A loophole hiding in plain sight
Broadcasting in Britain rests on a simple bargain: newspapers can be partisan, but broadcasters must be impartial. That’s what underpins public trust. The challenge is that the system depends on definitions that are now – putting it mildly – being stretched.
GB News has repeatedly blurred the distinction between “news” and “current affairs”. Politicians aren’t allowed to present news, but they can front current affairs programmes. The problem is that GB News often blends the two. Bulletins, commentary and discussion sit side by side, creating something that looks like news but can, if necessary, be defended as something else.
And Ofcom has struggled to police that boundary. In at least one case, the courts have made doing it even harder.
Who will complain when the audience agrees?
Regulation also depends on complaints. But complaints depend on disagreement.
GB News doesn’t have a complaint problem because its audience mostly agrees with what it’s being told. One poll on the channel found overwhelming support for Donald Trump’s claim that Europe had become “unrecognisable”. That says more about the audience than about Europe.
The system assumes sceptical viewers. It doesn’t account for loyal ones.
Not just another broadcaster
GB News has often been compared to TalkTV, Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to occupy a similar political space. But the comparison only goes so far.
TalkTV was combative and personality-led, but it never gave serving MPs their own shows. Nor did it attract the same sustained scrutiny over impartiality. When financial losses mounted, it pivoted online, out of reach of traditional broadcast regulation.
GB News took a different path. It doubled down.
It now features a regular collection of political figures, including Nigel Farage, presenting programmes that blur the line between analysis and advocacy. And despite reportedly losing more than £100m since launch, it continues to expand.
That raises an obvious question: if profitability isn’t the primary objective, then what is?
A regulatory system designed for a different era
Part of the answer lies in how far the media landscape has moved on.
Broadcasting rules were designed for a world of linear television and radio. Today, audiences consume news through video clips, streams and podcasts, much of it unregulated. GB News operates across both worlds, as a licensed broadcaster and a highly active online publisher.
Even perfect enforcement of existing rules wouldn’t fully solve the problem. The system wasn’t built for this.
As Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart discussed in this week’s The Rest is Politics, the fragmentation of media has made it harder to maintain a shared understanding of facts. Regulation has failed to keep pace.
The silence of the press
In theory, the wider media should provide something of a counterbalance. In practice, much of the national press occupies a similar political space.
That doesn’t mean coordination, but it does mean scrutiny tends to be limited. A channel that reinforces existing narratives is less likely to be challenged by those who share them.
The irony of bias
For years, its critics have claimed that the BBC is institutionally biased.
The BBC – for all its faults – operates under strict impartiality rules and is scrutinised relentlessly from all sides.
The irony is that those most vocal in their claims of BBC bias are now closely associated with a broadcaster where political alignment isn’t incidental – it’s embedded in its structure.
A warning from elsewhere
There is a precedent for this.
In the US, Rupert Murdoch was among those who benefited when President Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s. That paved the way for openly partisan broadcasting on his Fox News channel. That shift is often cited as one of the main factors that contributed to the increasingly polarised political culture we see today.
Britain has, until now, resisted that path. Its broadcasting rules were designed to prevent it. But those rules rely on enforcement, on clear definitions and on a media landscape that still resembles the one they were written for.
All three are now in question.
What happens next?
This is about one channel and one regulator. But it is also about what happens when the system around them no longer works as intended. It raises a broader question about whether the UK still has a functioning system for ensuring broadcast news is accurate, impartial and trusted. Because if GB News carries on as it currently does, with minimal intervention, then the distinction between news and political advocacy will continue to erode.
In that environment, influence may very well matter more than profit – and if that happens, the question is no longer whether Britain will follow the American path.
It’s how far along it already is.
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