Michael Grade Says Broadcasters Embarrassed by GB News Majority Agenda
Michael Grade said broadcasters are embarrassed by GB News because it speaks to the agenda of the majority. The recently departed Ofcom chair said he can now speak freely after stepping down, and he used that freedom to defend a channel that has become a flashpoint over whether Britain’s news regulators treat rivals the same way.
Grade on GB News and Ofcom
Grade said there is "a large swathe of the voting population" with no voice on the, and argued that "immigration, Brexit" do not get the same weight there as they do on GB News. He added that "the same rules apply to GB News as apply to the, Sky, ITN, whoever," putting the channel inside the same regulatory frame as the established news providers it is accused of challenging.
Grade also said GB News has "actually got better and better" and that compliance is not especially hard because "sometimes it’s only a sentence in a script." That line matters because it cuts to the complaint that the channel’s editorial style is not a loophole so much as a test of how strictly impartiality rules are being enforced.
Banatvala challenges the standard
Chris Banatvala, Ofcom’s founding director of standards, pushed back hard. He said, "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 added, "Grade is also wrong about the criticism of Ofcom."
Banatvala went further, saying, "No one seriously argues that GB News’s editorial agenda is itself the problem." His sharper point was regulatory: "The evidence is now clear: Ofcom is not applying the same regulatory standards to GB News as other news services." That is the central fault line here — not whether GB News has an agenda, but whether the rules are being applied evenly across the market.
GB News pushes back
A GB News spokesperson responded by saying, "GB News is Britain’s No 1 news channel." The channel also said, "It’s because we believe journalism is there to serve the people of our nation and not the media establishment elite."
The dispute lands after Ofcom was criticised for failing to investigate GB News’s interview with Donald Trump at the end of last year, when complaints said his claims about climate change, Islam and immigration went unchallenged. Ofcom has since announced it is investigating a matter mentioned in the article fragment, leaving the channel under fresh scrutiny while Grade’s comments sharpen the argument over who gets to set the standard for British news television.
