Byline Times has threatened to take Ofcom to court unless the regulator explains its approach to GB News.
The broadcaster was recently found to have broken impartiality rules after a probe into various shows that were presented separately by Tory MPs, including former House of Commons leader Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, minister without portfolio Esther McVey and backbencher Philip Davies.
Ofcom has put GB News on notice that any repeated breaches of the same rules “may result in the imposition of a statutory sanction”.
This could mean the channel being fined up to the maximum financial penalty of £250,000 or 5 per cent of the broadcaster’s revenue, or having its licence shortened or revoked along with having to broadcast a correction or not to re-air the programme.
But according to Byline Times, the ruling amounts to little more than “a few slaps on the wrist” for “glaring and egregious” breaches.
Julian Petley has teamed up with the Good Law Project to argue that GB News has revised the due impartiality requirements of the Ofcom Code in a move that runs counter to the 2003 Communications Act.
It comes after Ofcom’s CEO Dame Melanie Dawes appeared to suggest they are held to different standards than those that govern public service broadcasters such as the BBC.
In an interview with Sky News, she said: “The standard for someone like the BBC, which reaches still, 70 per cent of the TV viewing audience for news is a different one from that of a channel that has an audience of maybe 4 per cent or 5 per cent of a of the viewing public. We expect different things and I think that’s appropriate.”
Byline Times and The Good Law Project are contending that this amounts to a revision of the due impartiality requirements of the Code, that this revision has been undertaken by Ofcom without any form of consultation, and that this runs counter to the 2003 Communications Act.
You can read more about their case here.