Andrew Neil has condemned GB News for ‘turning into the Reform channel’, comparing it to the relationship between Fox and Donald Trump in the US.
This week, the New World published an extensive investigation into GB News and the extent to which it has breached Ofcom’s broadcasting rules.
Led by former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, the investigation got more than 20 journalists to analyse 15 GB News programmes.
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The journalists came from a range of backgrounds working at publishers such as The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, ITV, BBC News, and the Daily Mail.
Each reviewer was asked to score the programmes out of five for compliance with the Ofcom code. The average score given for the 15 programmes was just 1.4 out of five.
As part of he investigation, the New World spoke to Andrew Neil, who served as the channel’s founding chairman when it launched in June 2021.
However, within weeks of the launch, Neil left the channel, after realising it was being taken in a direction he didn’t agree with.
Speaking to the New World, he said the channel had now become a Reform mouthpiece, in the same way as in the US where Fox has become the “channel of Donald Trump.”
Speaking of the investors at GB News, he said: “It’s clear they have turned GB News into the Reform channel.
“I think they see themselves as in the vanguard of the Reform movement, and in a way, the politics has worked to their advantage.”
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Neil has previously called for Ofcom to do more to police GB News, saying in 2024 that the regulator needs to ‘grow a backbone’ in regards to the channel.
Of the 15 programmes reviewed for the investigation, nine received no Ofcom complaints, two received two complaints each and another, an interview with Donald Trump, led to 36 complaints.
Ofcom ruled that none of the programmes that received complaints raised substantive issues under its rules, Press Gazette reports.
One reviewer said of an episode of Nigel Farage’s evening show “This programme is Farage propaganda dressed up as a panel show.”
Another said that a programme presented by Matt Goodwin “absolutely did not comply” with Ofcom’s rules and was a “disgrace.”
The investigation was raised in the Commons at PMQs by Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, who called out Ofcom for “repeatedly refusing to take action” against GB News.
He asked Keir Starmer whether the issues was government rules “not being fit for purpose” or Ofcom “not properly enforcing them.”
This month, it was revealed that GB News had lost £22 million as its debt bill continues to pile up.