Since a chaotic launch amid widespread derision in June 2021, the British TV channel GB News has stabilised, from a business perspective at least, establishing itself as a niche product targeting right-wing viewers with its anglicised version of Fox News. Along the way, it has proved itself happy to give airtime to presenters and guests who dabble in, among other things, climate-change denialism, Covid conspiracy theories and anti-vax misinformation. This sort of stuff will be familiar to anyone who’s seen Fox in the United States, but it still comes as a bit of a culture shock in the more regulated waters of British television, where broadcasters are required as a condition of holding their licence to meet specified standards of fairness, impartiality and accuracy.
They’re also expected not to indulge in grossly misogynistic personal attacks of the sort that the actor turned unsuccessful politician Laurence Fox indulged in on Tuesday when he went on a live on-air rant against the PoliticsJoe journalist Ava Evans while talking to another GB News host, Dan Wootton.
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“Show me a single self-respecting man that would like to climb into bed with that woman ever, ever, who wasn’t an incel,” Fox said before telling a guffawing Wootton: “We need powerful, strong, amazing women who make great points for themselves. We don’t need these sort of feminist 4.0. They’re pathetic and embarrassing. Who’d want to shag that?”
Unsurprisingly, this performance has sparked more than 7,000 complaints to Ofcom, the UK broadcasting regulator. More unusually, it led to a lengthy apology from GB News and from Wootton, a former tabloid journalist whose MailOnline column was terminated on Thursday, “following events this week”, according to DMG Media, the Mail’s owner; the column had been suspended in recent weeks pending the outcome of investigations into wide-ranging allegations about his behaviour at a previous workplace. (Wootton accepts having made mistakes but denies criminal wrongdoing.)
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Wootton’s subsequent apology for his “inappropriate reaction” to Fox’s comments and his claim that he was “in no way amused” by them was slightly undermined when the suspended Fox then posted a screenshot of the two men exchanging laughter emojis straight after the incident. Wootton appears to have lost a pal and he too was suspended by GB News. On Thursday evening, Fox posted a 15-minute video in which he apologised for “demeaning” Evans and said he anticipated he and Wootton would be fired before the weekend by GB News, which he described as “the home of cancel culture”.
What to make of this steaming pile of ordure? Understandably, Evans, who posted a clip of the segment on social media after it aired, said the comments had made her “feel physically sick”. Ofcom has already upheld complaints against GB News on several occasions over the course of its short life, but no serious penalties have yet been imposed.
Meanwhile, the channel, which is available through most of the usual digital TV platforms, on YouTube and on its own streaming platform, as well as on audio via DAB, is making small but incremental gains across all of these. Alongside it, Talk TV, the similarly right-skewed channel owned by News UK, the company controlled until his recent retirement by the Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, is also nibbling at the heels of more established broadcasters (including the formerly Murdoch-owned Sky News). The fact that Conservative MPs and ex-MPs from Jacob Rees-Mogg to Nadine Dorries are liberally sprinkled across the presenting rosters of both channels strains any claims of impartiality beyond credulity.
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In a political environment characterised by years of relentless attacks by the Tories and their press allies on the concepts of public-service broadcasting and regulatory standards, the ground is fertile for well-funded media entrepreneurs powered by culture-war animus to exploit the opportunities offered by the contemporary multiplatform media ecosystem. (GB News is owned in large part by Legatum, a Dubai-based investment firm that has played a prominent role in right-wing think tanks and political movements, including the Brexit Leave campaign.)
In his new book The Fall: The End of the Murdoch Empire, the veteran Rupert-watcher Michael Wolff argues that Murdoch regarded Fox News – his most consequential, profitable and toxic creation – with some distaste, regretting the role it had played in the rise of Donald Trump, whom he apparently despises. Pull the other one. Anyone familiar with the story of Murdoch’s progress from Australian newspaper heir to Fleet Street usurper to American media mogul will know that alongside the ruthless and often brilliant business instincts ran a reckless disregard for ethical standards, a vicious partisanship in pursuit of political influence and an amoral pandering to misogyny and prejudice.
Wolff makes play of parallels and differences between the Murdoch family saga and the fictional world of the brilliant TV series Succession. But the differences are the more profound. Unlike Kendall Roy in Succession, Lachlan Murdoch appears to have inherited the crown, at least for now. And, unlike in Succession, there’s nothing funny about the Murdoch legacy, which isn’t confined to the family empire. The true successors to Murdoch are the dark moneymen and the shameless hacks who do their dirty work for them.
