Ofcom’s former chair faces backlash after defending GB News

Michael Grade, the former chair of Britain’s media regulator Ofcom, has come under fire after defending GB News and suggesting rival broadcasters are “embarrassed” by the channel because it reflects the concerns of a large section of the British public.

In an interview with PoliticsHome this week, Grade, a veteran television executive who has held senior roles at ITV, the BBC and Channel 4, said that, now he has stepped down as Ofcom chair, he is free to speak more openly about the broadcaster.

“I honestly think they’re embarrassed by the fact that there is a news organisation that has a different news agenda to them, that speaks to the agenda of the majority – if you look at the polls, a large swathe of the voting population, who have no voice on the BBC,” he said.

Pointing to issues such as immigration and Brexit, Grade argued GB News gives greater prominence to topics that have not received sufficient attention from established broadcasters.

“Immigration, Brexit, these are all issues that don’t get the weight on the BBC, or haven’t been able to, that GB News will give, so what’s the problem?” he said.

“Everything’s a choice, all the way up. Because GB News makes different editorial choices on each news day from the BBC, ITN or Sky, doesn’t make it wrong.”

While acknowledging that GB News “haven’t always played by the rules,” Grade said the channel had faced appropriate sanctions and had improved over time.

“They’ve actually got better and better. It’s not difficult to comply – sometimes it’s only a sentence in a script,” he said.

The remarks have reignited debate about Ofcom’s approach to regulating GB News, which has repeatedly attracted complaints and regulatory scrutiny since its launch in 2021.

Critics have pointed to Ofcom’s handling of a 2025 interview with Donald Trump on GB News, in which the US president made a series of disputed and inflammatory claims about Islam, immigration and climate change while facing little challenge from presenter Bev Turner. The regulator announced an investigation months after the broadcast aired.

At the time, the Good Law Project questioned the effectiveness of the regulator’s response.

“Ofcom’s finally investigating GB News over its failings to challenge Donald Trump’s false claims about climate change, Islam and immigration in an interview last year. But if regulation takes this long to come, is it really regulation?” the organisation said.

Campaign group 38 Degrees also described the investigation as “just the start,” warning that a failure to act decisively risked undermining confidence in the regulator itself.

Grade was appointed Ofcom chair by Boris Johnson’s government in 2022, less than a year after GB News launched. He stepped down in April and has since rejoined the Conservative whip in the House of Lords after spending four years as a non-affiliated peer while leading the regulator.

He has been succeeded by Ian Cheshire, the former chief executive of Kingfisher and ex-chair of Channel 4.

Grade’s comments drew immediate criticism from media experts and former regulators.

Chris Banatvala, Ofcom’s founding director of standards and one of the architects of the regulator’s broadcasting code, challenged Grade’s characterisation of impartiality rules.

“After reading hundreds of pages of Ofcom impartiality decisions, perhaps the clearest explanation for the regulator’s failures is Lord Grade’s suggestion that due impartiality can be achieved with little more than ‘a sentence in a script’,” he said.

Banatvala also rejected the notion that criticism of GB News stemmed from disagreement with its editorial priorities.

“Grade is also wrong about the criticism of Ofcom. No one seriously argues that GB News’s editorial agenda is itself the problem. Decisions about which stories to cover have always been a matter for broadcasters, not the regulator,” he said.

“The evidence is now clear: Ofcom is not applying the same regulatory standards to GB News as other news services.”

Steven Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster, similarly accused Grade of misrepresenting the legal requirements surrounding broadcast impartiality.

“Michael Grade appears to have rewritten the law on impartiality,” he said.

“It is up to Parliament to decide whether it wishes to change the law, but in the meantime let’s hope that Ofcom under its new chairman, Ian Cheshire, is prepared to regulate GB News as Parliament required.”

The comments also sparked criticism online, with many social media users mocking Grade’s intervention and questioning his understanding of Ofcom’s obligations.

“Those rules are not applied then…” wrote one commenter.

“I think Michael Grade meant to say ‘GB News is embarrassing’,” another posted.

A third wrote: “There we have it. The now departed chair of Ofcom demonstrates with his high-handed comments that he has no serious grasp of the concept of due impartiality nor the rules that Ofcom should be applying consistently, including to Farage News.”