‘Brilliantly witty and often cheeky’: Tributes as Gogglebox star Mary dies aged 92
GB News has been fined £100,000 for breaking impartiality rules over a programme featuring Rishi Sunak, Ofcom has said.
It comes after the media watchdog announced in May that the show called People’s Forum: The Prime Minister had breached broadcasting guidelines.
The programme featured then prime minister Mr Sunak answering questions from a studio audience and a presenter.
GB News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos said the fine was a “direct attack on free speech and journalism in the United Kingdom”.
“We believe these sanctions are unnecessary, unfair and unlawful,” he added.
The hour-long show, which aired on 12 February, prompted 547 complaints to Ofcom.
The regulator found earlier this year that while featuring Mr Sunak was fine in principle, “due weight” should have been given to an “appropriately wide range of significant views” other than the Conservatives.
Pic: PA
Ofcom said Mr Sunak “had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his government in a period preceding a UK general election,” which it recorded as a breach of impartiality rules.
The watchdog said “given the seriousness and repeated nature of this breach,” it had imposed a £100,000 financial penalty.
Read more from Sky News:
CCTV shows car smash into PM’s Chequers estate
See if you are better or worse off using our budget calculator
GB News was also directed to “broadcast a statement of our findings against it, on a date and in a form determined by us”.
The TV channel is challenging the breach decision by judicial review and Ofcom will not enforce the sanction decision until those proceedings are concluded.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Mr Frangopoulos insisted the show featuring Mr Sunak “was an important piece of public interest programming”, and that “appropriate steps” were taken to ensure due impartiality.
He added: “It was designed to allow members of the public to put their own questions directly to leading politicians.
“GB News chooses to be regulated and we understand our obligations under the Code.
“But, equally, Ofcom is obliged by law to uphold freedom of expression and apply its rules fairly and lawfully.”
Ofcom previously found GB News violated due impartiality rules in March over five programmes that featured Tory MPs as presenters.
Comedian Marcus Brigstocke has revealed he became addicted to pornography and received help to overcome the issue.
The TV star discussed the issue on The Hidden 20% podcast, saying he became addicted after he had an affair which led to the end of his first marriage.
Brigstocke, who has regularly been a panellist on Have I Got News For You and featured in the film Love Actually, said the “shame” from his affair “led to a lot of very dysfunctional behaviour”.
He told the podcast: “I’d stayed sober from drugs, alcohol, and my compulsive eating disorder, but I had become addicted to porn.
“I really had no idea that I was addicted to it. I sort of thought I looked at a normal amount of porn. Well, the normal amount of porn today is not like a normal amount of porn… before the internet.”
Brigstocke, 51, told host Ben Branson that most porn addicts “were addicted from about the age of 11”, saying it “profoundly alters your brain chemistry”.
“There are so many people with different depths of addiction to porn and to online social media,” he added. “But porn is the most toxic.”
The comedian said he would watch porn “all night, for the entire night”, before he received help to end his addiction.
Read more from Sky News:
GB News fined £100,000 by Ofcom over Sunak show
Musk summoned to court over $1m giveaways
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Brigstocke is now married to comedian Rachel Parris and the couple host a podcast called How Was It For You?
Rufus Sewell may seem to perfectly personify calm and confident characters in the acting world, but he admits he still struggles with public speaking.
“There’s nothing more terrifying,” he tells Sky News. “I remember having to do a reading at a church when I was very young and I was so nervous. I was at drama school, so people knew I wanted to be an actor, and as I was walking up towards the lectern I heard someone say, ‘this will be good’, and I completely froze.”
After portraying Prince Andrew in Scoop, which told the story of the royal’s infamous Newsnight interview in 2019, the British actor can now be seen on screen playing political superstar Hal Wyler in the second series of The Diplomat.
Sewell also recently played Prince Andrew in Scoop. Pic: Netflix/PA
Despite his ability to inhabit his characters, both real and fictional, the “idea of speaking as myself” he says has always been “a horror”.
Even playing confident characters is nerve-wracking, he says, as it creates an internal battle between himself and the role. “I naturally, if left to my own devices, become very, very self-conscious, so I have to find ways to trick myself out of it.”
In The Diplomat, Sewell’s character is the estranged ex-husband of Kate Wyler, the US ambassador to the UK, played by Keri Russell.
Pic: Netflix
She spends the first season navigating political minefields trying to prevent a war before it happens, after a British aircraft carrier is blown up off the coast of Iran.
The series ended on a cliffhanger that saw Hal and other political figures involved in a car explosion in London, and season two picks up following the threads of evidence left in the aftermath.
Russell credits the show’s creator, Deborah Cahn, with making the series such a thriller.
“That is the gold of our show, 100%,” she says. “She has this uncanny ability to portray political intrigue and the world of diplomacy, but also has this innate understanding of what makes people human and all the idiosyncratic weird things that make people normal.
“Even though they’re in this really seemingly powerful position, they still have bad days and are cranky, or get mad when their food is the wrong thing, or when they have to wear something they don’t like, and they still deal with all the embarrassments of daily life.”
Season two of The Diplomat out now on Netflix
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports7 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway