David Vance SubstackRead More
Suppose you really wanted to be a boxer. But further suppose that you only had one arm and so you were going into each fight against two handed opponents. The chance is that you will lose regardless of how talented or hopeful you are. Now, further imagine that the Referee of your boxing match was implacably hostile to you and gave every appearance of being in the back pocket of your opponent.
Such is the situation between GB News and Ofcom.
Who exactly is Ofcom?
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
It was back on the 20th June 2001 that the Queen’s Speech to the UK Parliament announced the creation of Ofcom. The new body, which was to replace several existing authorities, was conceived as a “super-regulator” to oversee media channels that were rapidly converging through digital transmission. This was during the Tony Blair era when new controls were being slipped into place.
GB News keeps falling foul of Ofcom, suffering heavy fines, but it has also has been much in the news over the past 12 months as it sacrificed so many decent presenters in order that it could try and avoid the ire of OFCOM. It started with Mark Stein being given the elbow for raising the concerns of the vaccine damaged, then Dan Wooton, Laurence Fox, Calvin Robinson and a very semi detached Neil Oliver. In getting rid of these voices, GB News seems to have forgotten the wisdom of Churchill;
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
Ofcom will eventually devour GB News for the very simple reason that Ofcom *is* an arm of Government and this Labour Government does not like any criticism no matter how much deserved. The BBC/Sky/Channel 4 axis of bias can operate with more of less impunity but such largesse is not extended to impudent upstarts like GB News.
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