Is GB News a closing shop? GB News, like Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, was an attempt to promote Free Speech against the censorship that spiralled out of control during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

I have watched GB News and supported it from before and through the whole of its existence. I have watched as its personnel is becoming its own echo-chamber although it claims to have breadth by having debates between opponents.

I watched the personnel being added and promoted through GB News. I wondered how Andrew Neil left it so quickly. He was clearly central to the promotion of the new channel. Its launch date was delayed and its early technical glitches were not what Neil expected nor what he was used to but I was surprised at how quickly he left the set. I agreed with his expectations but the importance of a new channel to deal with cancel culture was so important that I was sorry that he had left. Other presenters persisted and after attempts by other media to squeeze it out, GB News began to take off and embarrassed if not shamed the mainstream media by its success. Neil’s partner in the BBC’s This Week show Michael Portillo joined GB News with Alastair Stewart and a host of others, but Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage in particular helped to steady the ship and to set the tone of GB News.

I have watched presenters come and go, some dismissed because of breaches of GB News’ codes of conduct. On one occasion, three of them were removed at one time over one incident, although I do not know how this differed from cancel culture.

Neil Oliver‘s useful slot was moved from its regular Saturday evening tea-time slot, but its new showing seems to have concluded in September and I can find only one Neil Oliver Show online; is it cancelled? He still has an Opinion in which he continues to beat the drum for which GB News was set up. His most recent offering asks why “the truth is suppressed rigidly only until such times as it becomes impossible to deny any longer”, but now “at least the time lag between the big lies and the revelation of the truth is shortening from years to months.”

Viewers have been introduced to the allegiance or worldview of various additional presenters and contributors who seem to belong to predetermined groups comprising a mix that is probably intended to show the balance of the channel or programme, thus a disproportionate number of Roman Catholics are ‘balanced’ with a disproportionate number of homosexuals. The panellists in some shows are evidently drawn from a spectrum but the quality of debate is also a spectrum from useful to banal to plainly useless. Today an interview with a farmer about the detrimental effect of the Inheritance Tax imposed on farmers by Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget was followed by a discussion in which one panellist Lizzy Cundy expressed her concern for the farmers and said “I know the family” [17:27 hrs], showing a pre-selected relationship between contributors on the programme. Later the other panellist Peter Edwards suggested that the GB News Poll on X.com was of a self-selecting audience [17:54 hrs], contradicted by Nana Akua.

It is not easy to get through to public figures in any media. Nigel Farage, as have others, has repeatedly asked for the root of the Non-Crime Hate Incidents recently highlighted by Allison Pearson in an interview with Nigel Farage on GB News [at 19:05 hrs], but repeated emails to Farage with an explanation go unacknowledged, as do other emails. This is not unique to GB News, but after the assertions by its presenters that “we want to hear from you”, one might expect an acknowledgement of receipt, such as Andrew Neil’s This Week would regularly provide. Could it be that GB News’ own success [19:07 hrs] is too much for it to keep up with its own requests?

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21 Nov 2024: GB News has been the Number 1 news channel in the UK this week [19:04 hrs], ahead of the BBC News and Sky News.