Ministers urged to avoid Fox News style programming and weaker media regulation
The Government must ensure that the media remains strongly regulated to avoid the UK equivalent of Fox News arising, ministers have heard.
Concerns about broadcaster GB News’ content were also aired in the House of Lords, amid warnings that slackening the media watchdog Ofcom would lead down a “well-trodden path” witnessed in the US media.
Liberal Democrat former minister Lord McNally claimed GB News had “been testing the limits of how far it can go in ignoring impartiality rules by its choice of presenters and lines of questioning”, pointing to the station’s employment of Tory MPs including Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg , Esther McVey and Philip Davies.
The peer commended Ofcom’s work, but warned that suggestions from its chief executive that channels with a larger audience should be held to a higher regulatory standard “opens the way for a weakening and undermining of standards for which there is no parliamentary authority”.
He added: “And it leads us down an already well-trodden path.
“In the United States there is no impartiality governance framework around the media.
“The abolition of the fairness doctrine in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan paved the way for the fractured and polarized media environment we see today in