Five long years of GB News: where opinion ate the news

Britain feels more divided than it did five years ago. Trust is low, political tempers are high, and nostalgia for a supposedly golden past is growing. Research by King’s College London and Ipsos suggests concerns about immigration, identity and cultural change have intensified since 2020.

GB News didn’t create these anxieties but it has spent the past five years amplifying them.

Since launching on June 13, 2021, the channel has become an influential force in British political media, building an audience around culture-war conflict, anti-elite rhetoric and a constant stream of stories presenting immigration, net zero and social change as symptoms of national decline. What began as a self-styled insurgency against a supposedly liberal broadcasting establishment has evolved into something else: a political platform with growing influence over Britain’s right.

The channel still claims to speak for the ‘silent majority.’ Yet its most prominent voices are politicians, former politicians, wealthy business figures and media personalities, with Nigel Farage its defining star.

Five years on, the real story of GB News is not whether it disrupted British broadcasting. It’s how a channel built on resentment, nostalgia and permanent cultural conflict helped reshape the terms of Britain’s political debate.

A catalogue of outrage

We only have to look over past editions of Right-Wing Media Watch to ascertain exactly how inciting GB News actually is, with recurring fixations on immigration, crime, ‘woke’ institutions, climate policies, and alleged attacks on free speech.

Immigration is a particular obsession, with segments regularly portraying migration as a source of national decline and social disorder.

In one notable example, presenter Martin Daubney launched into a tirade about “lunatics” taking over the asylum system while discussing a case involving a convicted fraudster.

During another broadcast, political commentator Thomas Corbett-Dillon suggested there was “a genocide happening” against white people in England and warned that immigrants could one day “turn” on the white population.

Research by the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring found that during coverage of the far-right riots in 2024, GB News accounted for 62 percent of all clips across UK news channels that linked Muslims to the violence. The report concluded that the broadcaster repeatedly framed Muslims as perpetrators rather than victims, downplayed attacks on mosques and Muslim communities, and reinforced a hostile and one-sided narrative.

As RWW pointed to at the time, a study which found that people who regularly watch GB News are more likely to hold misconceptions about immigration, specifically, the belief that net migration to the UK is increasing, despite official statistics showing the opposite.

Climate science – a favourite punch bag

Climate policy is another major source of editorial outrage.

The channel has become a prominent platform for climate scepticism and anti-net-zero campaigning. Nigel Farage has dismissed the classification of carbon dioxide as a pollutant as “nuts,” while other presenters routinely frame climate policies as economically ruinous or ideologically driven.

And such views extend beyond its presenters. Sir Paul Marshall, the channel’s co-owner, recently claimed that Britain had been infected with what he called “climate derangement syndrome.”

Research by DeSmog found that around the 2024 general election, GB News aired at least 953 anti-climate attacks. 74 of those came from current or former representatives of Reform UK and its predecessor, the Brexit Party. Contributors variously described net zero as a “cult,” a “monster” and a threat to Britain’s prosperity.

A financial black hole

Yet for all the talk of disrupting the media landscape, the channel remains a remarkably costly enterprise.

The broadcaster’s latest accounts show a further £22 million loss during the most recent financial year. Although losses have narrowed, the channel has still burned through extraordinary sums of money. Total losses now stand at approximately £131 million for owners, hedge fund manage Sir Paul Marshall and Legatum Ventures, since it launched in 2021.

The channel’s financial struggles have been compounded by a long-running advertiser boycott. Since its launch, dozens of major brands have distanced themselves from GB News. IKEA said it had “not knowingly” advertised on the channel, while Vodafone, Specsavers, LV, Bosch and Pinterest all withdrew advertising within weeks of its debut.

One of the most surreal episodes came when Laurence Fox, later sacked by GB News following comments about a female journalist, announced he would return an award he had received from Specsavers in protest at the company’s decision to withdraw advertising.

Yet reporting of the broadcaster’s finances often comes wrapped in optimism, obscuring the extent to which GB News remains dependent on substantial shareholder funding. Press Gazette’s coverage, for example, highlighted audience growth and increasing revenues. Less attention was paid to the fact that GB News continues to require substantial injections of shareholder cash simply to remain operational.

Its parent company, All Perspectives Ltd, provided a further £17.7 million in funding during the year ending May 2025, taking the total backing for the venture to around £141 million.

‘Toothless’ Ofcom 

The figures make something of a mockery of recent claims by former Ofcom chairman Michael Grade that rival broadcasters are somehow “embarrassed” by GB News’s success. Established broadcasters would indeed be embarrassed by losses on this scale, but unlike GB News, they are accountable to shareholders, members or public service obligations that would not tolerate such sustained financial haemorrhaging.

Grade’s repeated interventions on GB News’ behalf also reinforce concerns that Ofcom has been unwilling to hold the channel to the same standards as other broadcasters. By May 2023, more than 4,500 complaints had been lodged against GB News since its launch. Yet in November 2023, Grade insisted that Ofcom did not want to be “in the business of telling broadcasters… who they can employ.”

In 2025, a presenter on the channel’s discussion programme Headliners repeated the dangerous falsehood relating LGBTQ+ people to paedophilia. A record 71,582 people used the Good Law Project’s online tool to submit complaints. Confronted with the largest volume of complaints in its history, Ofcom finally opened an investigation in March. Seven months later, it concluded that GB News had breached the Broadcasting Code.

Online audience falls

The broadcaster insists it remains “on track” to become Britain’s biggest news channel by 2028. Recent audience figures, however, cast doubt over that ambition. Monitoring by Press Gazette of UK news websites found that GB News recorded one of the steepest year-on-year declines in audience reach. Its reach fell by around 35 percent, placing it among the five biggest fallers and behind only Healthline Media, Chronicle Live, MyLondon and Examiner Live.

Television and radio audiences, meanwhile, increased by 53 percent and 61 percent respectively, according to BARB and RAJAR data.

GB News predictably presents such figures as evidence that it is outperforming rivals. But selective use of statistics has long been one of the channel’s habits. In 2021, for example, it promoted a poll suggesting the BBC was more biased than itself. Less prominently disclosed was the fact that the poll had been commissioned by GB News.

From GB News to ‘Farage News’

Yet GB News’ real magnitude extends beyond ratings, revenue or even controversy. Its greatest influence may lie in the role it plays in shaping political narratives around the man who could yet become Britain’s prime minister – Nigel Farage.

The Clacton MP has become the channel’s biggest star. He is paid almost £98,000 per month for presenting duties amounting to around 32 hours of airtime, earning approximately £1.18 million annually from the broadcaster.

That investment appears to have shaped editorial priorities. The channel has repeatedly portrayed Farage and Reform UK as victims of establishment hostility. When the National Education Union prepared to debate motions concerning the rise of the far right, the channel leapt to Reform’s defence, framing the discussion as evidence that teachers were attempting to indoctrinate children against Reform UK.

Coverage routinely depicts criticism of Farage’s party as unfair smears while presenting Reform as the target of ideological persecution. The result is a broadcaster that resembles a campaigning outlet rather than an independent news organisation.

Even some of GB News’ earliest architects recognise the shift. Andrew Neil, the channel’s founding chairman and original lead presenter, abandoned the project shortly after launch, fleeing back to the south of France amid technical hitches that literally made the station unwatchable. Speaking to the New World earlier this year for an investigation into the extent to which GB News has breached Ofcom’s broadcasting rules, Neil drew a comparison with Fox News’ relationship to Donald Trump.

“Just as Fox basically became the channel of Donald Trump, it’s clear they have turned GB News into the Reform channel. I think they see themselves as in the vanguard of the Reform movement,” he said.

That verdict is difficult to dispute. The investigation, meanwhile, determined that, almost by stealth, Reform UK has effectively ended up with its own TV station, while the broadcasting regulator appears to have more of less “given up the ghost.”

“And Nigel Farage is laughing all the way to the bank,” the report states. 

Five years on

Five years after launch, GB News remains a paradox.

It presents itself as a rebellious outsider while relying on wealthy backers to absorb enormous financial losses. It claims to challenge elite consensus while providing a platform for hedge fund managers, former ministers and leading political figures. It markets itself as a news channel while functioning as a vehicle for Reform UK and its politics.

The station has undoubtedly found an audience. But its lasting legacy may not be as a successful challenger to the broadcasting establishment. Instead, it may be remembered as the channel that blurred the line between news, activism, and political campaigning more than any major broadcaster in modern British history.

Five years in, GB News is no longer merely covering Britain’s culture wars. It’s become one of their most powerful participants.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch