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Five episodes of GB News programmes that were presented by Tory MPs were found by Ofcom to have broken broadcasting rules.
Two episodes of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State Of The Nation, two episodes of Friday Morning With Esther And Phil, and one episode of Saturday Morning With Esther And Phil, broadcast during May and June 2023, were the episodes in question and broke due impartiality rules, Ofcom said.
It comes six months after the regulator found an episode of The Live Desk on GB News, aired in July 2023, broke the same rules. Ofcom has warned that further breaches by GB News could result in a statutory sanction.
Rules under the Broadcasting Code state that news, in whatever form, must be presented with due impartiality. A politician cannot be a newsreader, news interviewer or news reporter unless, exceptionally, there is editorial justification.
But following its investigation on the five programmes on GB News, Ofcom said: “We found that host politicians acted as newsreaders, news interviewers or news reporters in sequences which clearly constituted news – including reporting breaking news events – without exceptional justification.
“News was, therefore, not presented with due impartiality.”
Ofcom said politicians played a “partial lrole in society”, and news content presented by them was “likely to be viewed by audiences in light of that perceived bias”.
It added: “In our view, the use of politicians to present the news risks undermining the integrity and credibility of regulated broadcast news.”
Under guidance from Ofcom, programmes are allowed to use a politician as a presenter in a programme with both news and current affairs content – but producers must ensure they don’t act as a newsreader, news interviewer or news reporter.
A sixth programme looked at – a separate episode of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State of the Nation – did not raise issues to warrant an investigation, Ofcom said.
This was because the clip, where Mr Rees-Mogg acted as an eye-witness reporting from an unforeseen security incident at Buckingham Palace, presented what the regulator said was “exceptional editorial justification”.
More follows on this breaking news story….