Michael Grade, the recently departed chair of Britain's media watchdog Ofcom, has claimed that critics of GB News are part of a “liberal, Islington consensus” seeking to limit freedom of expression. The Conservative peer, whose tenure at Ofcom faced scrutiny over the handling of the rightwing news channel, defended his welcoming of the broadcaster five years ago in the name of “plurality”.
Grade defends GB News amid impartiality concerns
In an interview with the Guardian, Lord Grade argued that a long-term failure to give “the white majority a voice in the debate” would harm social integration in Britain. He stated: “The fact is, what people don’t like is the fact that there is a television station giving voice to a strong body of opinion in this country which has been ignored for years. They just don’t like the idea that there’s any voice or any agenda, news agenda, which is different from the kind of liberal, Islington consensus.”
Ofcom’s regulatory approach to GB News under Grade has been the subject of multiple complaints. Appointed by Boris Johnson’s government in 2022, Grade faced criticism from former Ofcom figures who questioned the lack of intervention given the persistent rightwing political slant among GB News presenters and guests.
Grade cites Tony Sewell on white majority voice
Defending Ofcom’s stance, Grade referenced an interview by Tony Sewell, the Conservative peer who oversaw a controversial report on racial disparity. Grade said: “If you want integration, which we all do, and we want everybody to live happily ever after, irrespective of their background or their race or religion or anything, [Sewell] said that you have to give the white majority a voice in that debate. I hung on to that and I thought: ‘That is so brilliant. That’s why Reform is doing well in the polls.’ Of course it’s right.” He added that the voice of “the white majority” had not been heard properly in recent times, and claimed the BBC had a history of being out of sync with public mood.
Grade dismissed accusations that he failed to understand Ofcom’s impartiality rules, insisting that his critics did not understand them. He explained that the rules require due impartiality, offering flexibility for broadcasters to present different opinions across programming, and that the real red line is preventing politicians from delivering news bulletins. “What these … people do not understand – these alleged upholders of free speech and freedom of expression, but they want to close down a news broadcaster – they want the regulator to have the power to say who can and can’t appear on these programmes,” Grade said. “That’s for the birds. That should never be allowed to happen.”
GB News compliance and Ofcom investigations
GB News has stated it was designed “to serve the people of our nation and not the media establishment elite” and that it complies with all broadcasting rules. Grade denied claims that Ofcom treated GB News shows differently from BBC programmes such as Radio 4’s Today programme or BBC 2’s Newsnight. “Just because it’s called GB News doesn’t mean that all their programmes are news,” he said. “They’re discussion programmes, they’re political chat shows. We could argue this forever, but we’re dancing on the head of a pin. It’s irrelevant really. The real point is... you don’t get any politicians delivering the news.”
Particular attention has been drawn to a GB News interview with Donald Trump last year, where the US president’s claims about climate crisis, Islam, and immigration went unchallenged. Ofcom rejected complaints about the original broadcast but is investigating a show that repeated it. Grade described the interview as “not journalism’s finest hour”, but noted that the original broadcast was “immediately followed by a discussion programme where a lot of people tore into Trump”.
Grade said that if the government wanted stricter impartiality rules, such as a ban on politicians presenting programmes, it should change the law. “Impartiality is a state of grace to which you aspire,” Grade said. “And as long as you’re aspiring and seem to be trying to be impartial, that’s fine. One person’s impartiality is another person’s bias.”
