"Welcome to the launch of GB News, the British news channel intended to give a voice to those who have felt left out or even silenced in our great national debates", announced this Sunday evening Andrew Neil, British audiovisual star and chairman of the new channel.
GB News wants to bring strong opinions into a British audiovisual landscape deemed to be sensible, but refutes the logical comparisons with the controversial American channel Fox News.
We can't say anything more and we say it
Slayer of
cancel culture
and
woke
, the first news channel to be launched in the United Kingdom for two decades ensures that it reaches a wide audience. Including those who voted in favor of Brexit in 2016, and who consider themselves forgotten by traditional channels often criticized as too focused on the cosmopolitan London elite. This newcomer to the small screen hopes to become "the UK's news channel", although it competes directly with the well-established private channel Sky News and the British public broadcasting giant BBC.
Unlike the latter, it will not offer newspapers but talk shows led by presenters with strong opinions.
“Our presenters will have the freedom to say what they think, have fun and be brave on the issues that really matter to Brits,” said News and Programming Director John McAndrew.
140 London-based journalists
GB News has managed to lure some big British media figures like Andrew Neil into its nets - with 25 years of biting BBC interviews and his past as editor at the
Sunday Times
- but also wants to be innovative with a team of 140 journalists based in London. "We are committed to covering people's agendas, not the media," insisted Andrew Neil, promising not to echo the "metropolitan mentality" and the "Westminster bubble, too often obsessed." by questions that are of no importance to others ”.
Since the announcement of its creation, the channel has been accused of being a clone of the sensationalist American channel Fox News wanting to fuel a cultural divide on which the powerful British tabloids already surf extensively.
In addition to its format, its promise to address an audience disappointed with the BBC and feeling under-represented in the Brexit debate, draws comparisons with the American channel, which appeals to viewers hostile to traditional politics and media.
A right-wing equivalent of the BBC?
Andrew Neil dismisses a "simplistic and inaccurate" analysis: "In terms of format, we look like Fox, but we won't be like Fox as long as they come from a hard right wing that supports an agenda of conspiracy and disinformation ". GB News CEO Angelos Frangopoulos, who put together Fox-like programming when he headed Sky News Australia, also refuted GB News's description as a right-wing equivalent of the BBC.
For Jane Martison, professor of journalism at City University of London, the atmosphere before this launch is “a certain hysteria on both sides”. "Some say it's Fox, while the channel is not yet launched, so let's wait and see," she told AFP. On the other hand, if you criticize the channel, you are accused of being part of the liberal intelligentsia, which is a simplistic and a little hostile argument ”. According to the teacher, it will not be possible for GB News to reproduce Fox News, due to "the rules of impartiality" of Ofcom, the British audiovisual gendarme, but it "will be very interesting to see how they play out. comply with established rules ”.
Des Freedman, professor at Goldsmith University in London, fears that this new channel will invite debates of ideas hostile to those of social justice activists on television, as is already the case in many British tabloids.
"It will not be about
breaking news
, he said, it will be discussions on sofas, dominated by people with a very strong point of view on freedom of expression and the idea that we are in the middle of a cultural war ”.
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