AIBU to ask your opinion of GB News?

[GingerCream45]

A friend recommended it. Have listened a few times. Just seemed to be endless discussions about stopping the small boats. Presumably this is a hard right leaning Station?

Right wing media is funded by big business and the super rich and is always given more prominence. It can afford to pay huge salaries (100k a year for someone like Lee Anderson for a couple of hous work a week.

Left wing media is much more low key and funded by whatever subscribers they have.

Left wing agenda still exists which means it is possible to limit to that outlet, talk to people who do the same and end up with an echo chamber

What's the left wing version of GB News?

Are people asking for TV equivalent. I don’t think it needs to be TV to have an agenda, bias and political outlook

The pp made a comment about echo chambers and that’s just adhering to your own views and trying to drive out others. Of course that can happen at the other end of the spectrum, it happens on here

I don’t think The Guardian will set up their own Tv station any time soon, not least because they wouldn’t get the viewing figures to get the pay through advertising

The popularity of GBN is interesting though, BBC fee payers are down, maybe it’s irritated people with its own bias and people are dropping it for alternatives

The Guardian is increasingly multimedia (which annoys me as I hate watching videos when I'm in reading mode). But it shows where they are going.

I would see Channel 4 as having the most significant amount of time of any media outlet dedicated to actual left wing viewpoints, particularly in the past. But it has plenty of other stuff too.

Im getting less and less patient about bias accusations at the Beeb. If you spend much time on GBN, obviously hearing centrist views is going to sound very left wing.

I don’t spend any time on GBN but I do think the BBC has a growing issue hence losing fee payers

I doubt posts such as I am annoyed by accusations… etc will help ‘the Beeb’ much in the end.

Fee payers will show it with their cancellations

The Guardian is more Liberal/New Labour than left wing anyway. It even backed the Lib Dems recently in an election (and were generally hostile to Corbyn).

But even The Guardian are always begging for money for subscribers to keep it going. Right wing media is bankrolled by the billionaires and big money interests.

Are people asking for TV equivalent. I don’t think it needs to be TV to have an agenda, bias and political outlook

The problem is TV are tied to regulations that they are to be impartial unlike other media such as newspapers so it is good to ask for a TV equivalent

GB News is a news station when it wants to be and a current affairs station when under scrutiny

Channel 4 traditionally fairly left leaning but you've still got Andrew Neil as it's main political commentator, the man who set up GB News.

I don't care for BBC News as its state media and scared of the government, its too establishment biased. However, it's people wanting echo Chambers (mainly on the right but also left)that's switching people off it as well. Many see balance as bias. There isn't a left leaning broadcasting media with the finance behind it of GB News or Talk TV though.

It’s not as popular as it likes to pretend it is. This year, it attracted 3.4m viewers a month compared with BBC at nearly 11m and Sky and nearly 9m. That is despite it having huge injections of cash from the Middle East. There is some hope for the British public it would seem.

It suffers from the fact that the U.K. has more regulation on tv news. It requires impartiality - balance. In the US Fox can slant it’s ‘news’ much more freely.

Ofcom recognises that, in line with the right to freedom of expression, broadcasters are free to decide the editorial approach of their programmes. We also consider it essential for current affairs programmes to provide opinionated, challenging debate, and to be able to discuss and analyse topical matters, and take a position on those issues. But in doing so, broadcasters must observe the rules set out in the Broadcasting Code.
The Code is clear that when programmes are dealing with matters of major political controversy and current public policy – including immigration and asylum policy – heightened impartiality requirements apply. Specifically, rules 5.11 and 5.12 require that an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in such programmes, or in clearly linked and timely programmes.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/update-gb-news-impartiality#:~:text=Ofcom%27s%20investigation%20and%20decision&text=GB%20News%20accepted%20that%20the,its%20compliance%20of%20future%20programming.

"Suffers" from a requirement for some balance? May it long continue to do so.

When the hotels started sacking their workers after taking on the contracts to house asylum seekers GB News and Talk TV were the only channels to interview the sacked hotel workers and ask them how they had been affected financially etc. Didnt see that on the left leaning Channel 4 news. The left have badly let down the working class people of the UK I say that as someone on the left And when that happens the void is often filled by people you wouldnt expect.

Even now the Red Tories Labour are gearing up for the next election and are banging on about home ownership.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/oct/30/tucker-carlson-condemned-capitol-attack-liz-cheney
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fox-news-tucker-carlson-fresh-scrutiny-buffalo-mass-shooting-rcna29084
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox_News_Network
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63837309

‘What's the left wing version of GB News?’

there isn’t one. Thank god. I read the Fail, The Times and the Telegraph alongside BBC, Guardian and others because I do think it’s important NOT to get stuck in an echo chamber.
But GB news is a cesspit of unlikeable right wing extremists - and not actually need at all.

I agree. In the US they were broadcasting hours of fake claims that the election was stolen. They knew that wasn’t the case - a lawsuit by a company that makes voting machines led to lots of messages and emails coming out that showed the executives and presenters knew they were broadcasting lies. Fox paid the voting machine company $787.5 million in a settlement.

Then there were the Capitol riots and Tucker Carlson, one of their presenters, said that the riot was a ‘false flag’ operation conducted by the FBI.

This crap has a lasting impact on people’s faith in democracy.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/america-biden-election-2020-poll-victory

The kind of stuff you’d expect to see on right wing conspiracy sites is presented as fact on Fox News. Then people post about it on social media. It bounces back and forth between those points gaining ‘credibility’, with them citing each other as sources.

This is a ‘news’ channel where a host, on air, said that a school shooting didn’t happen and accused grieving parents of being hired actors.

They're hardly for the workers though. Only when it fits an agenda. They're obsessed with asylum aeekers and boats, when people are more worried about the economy, which is doing worse because of the Brexit the right championed. Near enough every GBN presenter still Champions Brexit despite the small boats bring a direct consequence of it.

I sometimes watch Andrew Doyle on GB News- he mostly does issues surrounding free speech and gender.

I sometimes watch it.
It gets the faux lefty virtue-signallers on mumsnet very worked up tho’ 🫨
Freedom of choice people - it’s a thing.
I suspect these bien pensants don’t get nearly as riled about the anti semitic BBC.

Channel 4 News. I religiously watch it every night but sometimes think FFS. I don't watch GB news at all. Sometimes think ITV news is the most balanced.

‘I sometimes watch it.
It gets the faux lefty virtue-signallers on mumsnet very worked up tho’ 🫨
Freedom of choice people - it’s a thing.
I suspect these bien pensants don’t get nearly as riled about the anti semitic BBC.’

mmm, the BBC reporting on the slaughter of Gazan’s in bombings is that what makes it ‘anti semitic??‘

GB ‘news’ absolutely has a right to exist, but whether or not trading stds should go after them for the claim to be news is certainly up for debate…

I agree C4 News is probably the most LW news show. But C4 News is in no way equivalent to the GB News channel.

What is a faux lefty virtue-signaller?

I'm resoundingly right wing. I just find grown adults milking culture wars to be really fucking embarrassing