British Telly

Ofcom has fined the rightwing broadcaster GB News £100,000 for “breaking due impartiality rules” after an interview with the former prime minister Rishi Sunak earlier this year.

The media regulator said it chose to impose a fine over the programme titled People’s Forum: The Prime Minister because it considered the breach serious, and because of GB News’s track record of breaking impartiality rules.

“We concluded that the then prime minister Rishi Sunak had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his government in a period preceding a UK general election, in breach of rules 5.11 and 5.12 of the broadcasting code,” Ofcom said.

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GB News has already been found to have repeatedly breached impartiality rules by allowing sitting Conservative MPs to serve as news presenters. The broadcast regulator said these related to five occasions involving Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey and Philip Davies. All three were Tory MPs at the time, though only McVey remains in the Commons.

The broadcaster was not fined but was put “on notice” that more breaches “may result in the imposition of a statutory sanction”. And Ofcom said GB News’s actions risked undermining the high public trust in regulated broadcast media.