'The segment of concern gave a wholly biased account of the verdict in the trial of Donald Trump for sexual assault'
Ofcom has been sent a strongly worded letter from two leading Green Party politicians, calling for the media regulator to revoke the broadcasting licence given to GB News after the scandal hit channel was once again found to have breached broadcasting regulations.
Molly Scott Cato, Green Party Speaker on Economy and Finance and Councillor Jack Lenox, Parliamentary Candidate for Lancaster, have shared a picture of their letter on Twitter, with Lenox tweeting: “Jacob Rees-Mogg’s defence of Donald Trump’s sexual abuse is disgusting. And his brazen attempt to mislead the public is a grotesque abuse of our broadcasting regulations.
“Today @GreenPartyMolly and I have written to Ofcom asking them to revoke GB News’ broadcasting licence.”
Ardent Brexiteer Rees-Mogg has been slammed for his GB News broadcast on the Donald Trump sexual assault trial. Rees-Mogg emphasised that Trump had been found ‘not guilty of rape’, and also questioned the US legal system. Rees-Mogg was joined on the programme by Kari Lake, a top Republican and well-known 2020 Election denier, as well as Nigel Farage.
A jury found that Trump had sexually abused magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a New York department store in the 1990s. The jury also found Trump liable for defamation for calling the writer’s accusations “a hoax and a lie”.
Reacting to Rees-Mogg’s comments on Trump, James O’Brien tweeted: “When Owen Paterson broke Parliamentary rules, Jacob Rees-Mogg attacked the rules.
“When a jury decided Donald Trump was a sex offender, Jacob Rees-Mogg attacked trial by jury. There’s a pattern here.”
Green Party politicians Cato and Lenox wrote in their letter: “The segment of concern gave a wholly biased account of the verdict in the trial of Donald Trump for sexual assault, including comments from Karl Lake that were designed to undermine the rule of law.
“On the basis of this segment and a string of other violations of the broadcasting code, we are requesting that you revoke GB News’ broadcasting licence’.
The letter also comes after GB news was once again criticised by Ofcom for breaching broadcasting rules after it allowed false claims to be aired about the Covid-19 vaccine.
Ofcom said that an episode of the Mark Steyn show on October 4th 2022 saw guest Dr Naomi Wolf make serious claims about the Covid-19 vaccine, ‘including that its rollout amounted to a pre-meditated crime – “mass murder” – and was comparable to the actions of “doctors in pre-Nazi Germany”.
The media watchdog said that of particular concern was Dr Wolf’s significant and alarming claim that “mass murder” was ‘taking place through the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccinations, which she repeated three times’.
In March, GB News was found to be in breach of Ofcom regulations, after presenter Mark Steyn made “potentially harmful and materially misleading” claims about Covid-19 vaccines.
The broadcasting rules were broken when Steyn made comments about the Covid-19 booster jabs, claiming falsely that data showed significantly greater risk” of “infection, hospitalisation and death”, from the third jab.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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