Ofcom Fines GB News $130,000 Over Rishi Sunak Live Show

Ofcom has fined GB News £100,000 ($130,000) over impartiality during its People’s Forum: The Prime Minister live show with Rishi Sunak just prior to the UK general election.

The regulator concluded that the prime minister had a “mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his Government.”

“Given the seriousness and repeated nature of this breach, Ofcom has imposed a financial penalty of £100,000 on GB News Limited. We have also directed GB News to broadcast a statement of our findings against it, on a date and in a form determined by us,” Ofcom said of the near unprecedented move to fine a UK news network.

GB News is currently challenging the original decision to find it to be in breach of the Ofcom code, and Ofcom stressed that it will not enforce the fine until those proceedings are concluded.

The move is a crescendo to a fiery period between GB News and Ofcom.

GB News has repeatedly been found to be in breach of the Ofcom code and Ofcom has opened more than a dozen investigations since the channel launched. The regulator recently placed the channel “on notice” after five code breaches over the thorny issues of politicians acting as news presenters.

GB News was also rapped last year over Laurence Fox’s highly misogynistic rant about a female journalist, which led to him being fired from the station and presenter Dan Wootton leaving. A separate investigation into ex-presenter Wootton’s Dan Wootton Tonight show was recently discontinued along with five investigations into the network’s Don’t Kill Cash Campaign.