Why it’s time for serious people to stop defending GB News

By MARCUS STEAD

Those of us who lean to the right politically were hoping for big things from GB News when it launched in June 2021.

There was a clear need for a counterbalance to the existing broadcast media outlets. BBC News is more-or-less a broadcast version of the Guardian, and most people who work there share its Islington-esque world view.

ITN’s News at Ten was, for many years, the ‘gold standard’ of TV news bulletins, in the days of Alastair Burnet, Reginald Bosanquet, Sandy Gall, Trevor McDonald and others. But nowadays we are treated to nightly little homilies from Tom Bradby and political analysis from Robert Peston, who all too frequently mixes up ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’. It is noticeable that it continues to be a respectable-enough programme on nights when those two are absent.

Channel 4 News was a respectable, upmarket, worldly programme during its first seven years from 1982 when anchored by the late and much-missed Peter Sissons. But during the 1990s and beyond, it became ‘The World According to Jon Snow’, and it has continued in that mould, even though the man himself has now left the programme.

Sky News, from its launch in 1989, was a sharp, hard-edged, high-quality news service, and for many years it really did provide a healthy counterbalance to the BBC, but a steady decline has been happening at the channel for many years due to cost-cutting measures, and the sale of Sky to Comcast saw its content become, if anything, slightly to the left of the BBC.

There was a gap to be filled, and there was cause for optimism in the months leading up to its launch. The original chairman, Andrew Neil, had a broad vision of a patriotic news channel that was neither London-centric nor woke.

Mr Neil, who led Sky TV during its early days, understands newspapers and the TV news industry very well. But his vision clashed with that of chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos, a former head of Sky News Australia, whose vision appeared to be to create a British equivalent of Fox News.

Mr Neil was gone within weeks of launch, and, while the signs were there from the start, within months it evolved into a channel of shouty, sensationalist hyperbole that indulged cranky conspiracy theories and fringe nutters. The more sensible elements, such as Mr Neil himself, the excellent Colin Brazier and a few others were gone.

GB News is not a ‘news’ channel as such. It does not contain proper-length news bulletins that consist of facts and analysis. Nor is there much in the way of thoughtful debate.

It appears that its main purpose is to get people wound up about a small pool of topics, thereby creating clips that are then shared on social media. The topics in question are the same ones over and over again – Harry and Meghan, the boats crossing the channel, the health of members of the Royal Family, Covid conspiracies, the World Economic Forum plot to take over the planet and a few others.

And boy, does it love a conspiracy. There is little tangible evidence that the Covid vaccine has been anything other than a widespread success – the recent ITV drama Breathtaking was a solemn reminder of how we lost many good doctors, nurses and other hospital staff to Covid.

The vaccine was rolled out speedily and efficiently, thanks largely to the UK not being in the EU’s procurement programme (why don’t Brexiteers make more of this?) and high levels of uptake mean that while Covid will probably always be with us, for most people it is now little more than a cold or at worst an unpleasant dose of flu.

But by watching GB News, one would think Covid never really existed and that the vaccine has been an unmitigated disaster that has caused large numbers of deaths. There is no serious evidence to back this up, but they keep pushing the line regardless.

When pulled up by Ofcom, GB News turns this, itself into a conspiracy. The regulator’s rules are clear – a serving MP cannot be a newsreader, but he or she can host a current affairs programme. Put simply, if Jacob Rees-Mogg had handed over to the NEWSREADER when a story was breaking during his programme, he would have got away with it. The conspiracy theorists have little to say about Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy being investigated for similar on his LBC radio show. It says a lot about GB News that production staff are not properly versed on such rules.

Conspiracies make for clickbait, but this certainly has not translated into profit. GB News recorded operating losses of £42.4m in its most recent accounts, representing a 38% increase on the year before. It has reported total losses since launch of £76m. It is a very long way indeed from reaching profitability and no sensible measures are being proposed to turn it around.

The channel is, in effect, being bankrolled by hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall and investment firm Legatum. Marshall recently stood down from the board of GB News’s parent company as he steps up his bid to purchase the Daily Telegraph. There is little evidence that he understands the news media or how to manage such a company effectively. Those close to him say he is motivated primarily by a fundamentalist Christian desire to influence British society. Targeting a channel at the cranky fringes of the political spectrum who are taken in by the various GB News rabbit holes is a very strange way of going about it.

Morale behind the scenes at GB News is at rock bottom. Production staff come and go at quick-speed. There is little attempt to hire and retain top-quality producers. Unreasonable demands are made of the staff in terms of working hours and lack of expenses. In short, a weekend producer asking for an extra fiver because, for instance, their tube fare has gone up can forget it, but they find £29,290.47 per month to pay Jacob Rees-Mogg to host a one-hour show for four nights per week. He’s estimated to be worth around £100 million already.

Jacob Rees-Mogg is paid more than £29,000 per month by GB News, while they penny-pinch on production staff.

Last week, Frangopoulos announced GB News’s first redundancy round as it seeks to trim 40 roles from its 295-strong workforce, a cut of around 14%.

40 redundancies would save enough cash to fund the channel for around 25 days at the current burn rate. Whichever way you look at it, GB News’s business model is ludicrous.

But to go back to the sensationalist, shouty, clickbait-chasing nature of GB News. The key point being, there is little to no actual news on the channel, just lots of people, some of them, like Neil and Christine Hamilton, very silly or disgraced, giving us their opinions.

Nor do they really make any effort to get to the heart of a story. Take the issue of criminal gangs orchestrating boat crossings on the English Channel as an example.

If you relied on GB News for your information, you would believe that boats are arriving in Kent from Calais each day and the migrants are taken to five-star hotels to live a life of luxury.

This is mostly nonsense. The vast majority of migrants are placed in contingency accommodation such as a hotel, which offers meals. If this is the case, they are eligible for £8.24 per week to cover clothes, non-prescription medication and travel.

If their application for asylum support is granted, theoretically an asylum seeker is moved from initial accommodation to dispersal accommodation, which is usually a furnished flat or house away from London or the south-east of England. 

If they get this kind of self-catering accommodation, they can also get £40.85 per week for each person in their household on a prepaid card, to pay for things like food, clothing and toiletries. Children and pregnant women get an extra £3 to £5 per week on top of that and there’s a one-off £300 maternity payment available to those with a baby due in eight weeks or less or have a baby under six weeks old.

These are the facts. But you would never know it from watching GB News. And yes, I agree that the danger of not being able to identify those making the crossings poses a risk in terms of allowing extremists into the country, but the narrative that goes unchallenged on GB News all too often that this is a Muslim plot to take over the country is a very silly one.

So how did the five-star hotel conspiracy get going? This is actually quite easy to explain – not that GB News would be very interested in giving you the rational explanation.

It dates back to the start of the pandemic. What actually happens in five-star hotels during normal circumstances? Weddings, conferences, spa trips, exhibitions and so on. All such things were cancelled during lockdown.

Most asylum seekers are initially housed in hostel-style accommodation, sleeping several to a room, with shared washing and dining areas. This would not have been safe during lockdowns due to social distancing rules.

In other words, the ‘five-star hotel’ scenarios came about due to a ‘perfect storm’ of the hotels themselves not being able to do business in the normal way, and the usual hostel-style accommodation for asylum seekers being unsafe.

I tolerated GB News for a long time, in the hope it would improve, or, perhaps a better way of putting it is to say in the hope it would grow up.

But for me, the final straw came on 15 March. They say ‘a little local knowledge goes a long way’, but that was something clearly lacking from Patrick Christys’s programme that evening.

Christys chaired a discussion about migrants apparently being moved to a site close to my home in Cardiff Bay. Among his guests was one of the founders of a cranky fringe group called Voice of Wales, known for posting online video interviews with all kinds of conspiracy theorists, while expressing admiration for the likes of Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox. Their YouTube channel has long since been closed down. These are not reliable people.

But there was a ‘laugh out loud’ moment that really sealed it for me. I know the area in question very well indeed, and these are the the facts: There is a large IKEA store, and to the west of it is derelict land where gasworks stood long ago.

Some time ago, a small number of basic flats, not particularly high-rise, were built on part of the land. These have been used to house homeless people and, quite possibly, some asylum seekers. On the remainder of the derelict land, chalet-like accommodation is being built at the moment for a similar purpose.

My ‘laugh out loud’ moment came when this computer-generated graphic appeared during this interview on Christys’s programme, and I’ll explain why below:

The graphic is hilarious, because it bares no resemblance to what is actually there. The IKEA is real, as is the disused gas holder on the left. But on the forefront of the picture, where the flats and the chalets are is a very large retail park, containing a car park and shops such as Lidl, B&M, Home Bargains and Iceland.

The actual flats are: 1. Nowhere near as high as those on the right of the picture. 2. In a completely different location anyway, to the left of the picture near the IKEA.

Short of demolishing a very large, popular retail park to build these flats and chalets, it simply isn’t going to happen.

Here is what is actually on the site:

Cardiff Bay retail park as it actually looks on Google Earth.

As you can see, a small number of flats have been built next to the IKEA mini-roundabout and the out-of-shot disused gas holder. A modest number of one-floor chalets are being built on disused land north of the gas holder where the gasworks once stood.

But, as is clear from the second image, the retail park is alive and well, with a relatively full car park and plenty of shops. I already know this, because I visit at least one of the shops most days.

The deception goes further than that. Last weekend, it was a sunny day and I spent a bit of time relaxing in the park on the far left of the picture. As I left, I walked along the pathway by the former gasworks and I went through the area where those not-very-high-rise flats are by IKEA.

There was nothing much of interest to see. One of the flats had a window open and some rather cheery music was playing, though not excessively loudly. I could see people inside some of the flats, but there was nothing worthy of comment.

People around here won’t be particularly outraged by the prospect of somebody from Sudan moving in, as GB News and Voice of Wales want us to be. We live among one of Britain’s oldest and best-integrated Muslim communities.

They rub along very well with others and there is nothing to fear (no doubt GB News will find a conspiracy of some sort for me pointing that out). We also have Hindus, Sikhs, Irish people and all kinds of other groups living in the area, going back to the days when Cardiff had the busiest docks in the world.

Yes, there are serious problems with lack of integration in other parts of the country, and we should not underestimate that, but to stir up problems where there are few (if any) is grossly irresponsible of GB News.

There is a wider, even more important point to be made on this: I know this story to be ludicrous because it is very close to my home. If they are trying to grossly mislead me on this, what else are they grossly misleading me about, in parts of the country I don’t know so well?

To end where we began: Yes, there is a need for a news broadcast outlet that is patriotic, non London-centric, non-woke, and that doesn’t patronise or condescend those who support Brexit or have legitimate concerns about uncontrolled mass immigration.

We could also do with such an outlet having a far greater understanding of economics and the private sector than the mainstream broadcast media has, and be less averse to the advantages of Thatcherism and Reaganism.

But any hopes that GB News will fill that void are gone. It is a channel for the cranks and the conspiracy theorists, and its business model is every bit as ludicrous as its content. Serious, patriotic, conservative-minded people ought to stop defending it.