Rivals plan Fox News-style opinionated TV station in UK

Posted on August 29, 2020 by Admin

Groups pitching to perceived desire for alternative output as trust in BBC falls

Rival efforts are under way to launch a Fox News-style opinionated current affairs TV station in Britain to counter the BBC.

One group is promising a news channel “distinctly different from the out-of-touch incumbents” and has already been awarded a licence to broadcast by the media regulator, Ofcom, under the name “GB News”. Its founder has said the BBC is a “disgrace” that “is bad for Britain on so many levels” and “needs to be broken up”.

RT loses challenge against claims of bias in novichok reporting

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Admin

Kremlin-backed channel fails to overturn Ofcom ruling that also related to Syria coverage

The Kremlin-backed news channel RT has lost a high court challenge to overturn a ruling by the UK media regulator that it broadcast biased programmes relating to the novichok poisoning in Salisbury and the war in Syria.

Ofcom fined RT £200,000 after determining that seven programmes, including two presented by the former MP George Galloway, were in breach of UK broadcasting rules relating to due impartiality regarding matters of political controversy.

Jeremy Hunt: Russian TV station a ‘weapon of disinformation’

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Admin

Foreign secretary’s press freedom day speech ramps up British assault on RT

Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt will on Thursday declare the Russian government-owned TV station RT to be a “weapon of disinformation” in a speech to mark World Press Freedom Day.

The comments, to an audience in Ethiopia, mark an escalation of a British ministerial assault on the standards of the Russian broadcaster, originally known as Russia Today, which had faced repeated investigations into its output by the media regulator Ofcom.

Iran TV station did not break rules over interview praising attack – Ofcom

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Admin

UK-based Iran International broadcast a separatist who spoke in support of the Ahvaz terrorist attack in 2018

Iran International did not breach the broadcasting code by interviewing a spokesman for a separatist group who praised last September’s terrorist attack in the Iranian city of Ahvaz, the British regulator Ofcom has ruled.

The news channel, which broadcasts in Farsi but is based west London, interviewed Yacoub Hor al-Tostari, a spokesman for the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz in the immediate aftermath of the attack on a military parade which left 30 people dead, and which was later condemned by the UN security council as a “heinous and cowardly terrorist attack”.