Tag Archives: impartiality

HAS OFCOM’S ‘PLAN B’ FOR FARAGE PASSED THE NANDY TEST ?

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Last month (September 2025) the Secretary of State for Culture,Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, launched an attack on “political polemic presented as news” and cited Nigel Farage’s programme on GB News. She told MPs on the Culture Select Committee :

“Ofcom is currently consulting on tightening the rules around politicians presenting news programmes and news in any format and that is something that we as a government strongly support. We will look closely at what Ofcom present to us but it is an area in which we intend to act”.

Just in case Ofcom wasn’t listening, she said something similar at the Royal Television Society conference and again in an interview with the Media Confidential podcast. And in a further flourish before Ofcom announced its decision she followed up on research from Cardiff University, funded by AHRC and carrIed out by YouGov.This found ‘public opposition to allowing politicians to front current affairs programmes – contradicting research carried out by the regulator, Ofcom’. Responding to this finding the Secretary of State doubled down saying the public were “right to be concerned about elected politicians playing the role of news presenters”.

Now we have Ofcom’s decision about politician presenters in a document which also sets out its views on the responses to its consultation. Among those responses was one which I submitted with former Ofcom colleague Chris Banatvala.

There has been much confusion about what the Ofcom announcement means. First the easy bit: the original proposal which Ofcom put out to consultation has been dropped because a range of objectors (including us and GB News) argued it was unworkable. Now the complicated alternative. Ofcom has come up with its Plan B which some readers think is tightening the rules as Lisa Nandy wants and some think loosens them which she certainly doesn’t.

Chris Banatvala has done his own independent forensic examination of the announcement. He explains that Ofcom has decided not to make any changes to the Broadcasting Code which would tighten the rules but instead has refined its ‘non-binding guidance’ in a way which allows the Farage show to continue. He concludes “For the first time ever, Ofcom seems to be allowing politicians to present ‘news, in whatever form’ within non-news programmes but will then consider a number of factors before deciding whether the content is impartial” .

I read that as a loosening of the rules and you don’t have to take my word for it, the positive response from GB News to the announcement confirms this. But maybe the regulator won’t mind a bit of confusion all round, a bit of ‘creative ambiguity’ to leave some potential jeopardy for GB News if it goes too far for the regulator.

We await Ms Nandy’s judgement on whether Ofcom’s ‘Plan B’ has passed her test, has Ofcom tightened ‘the rules around politicians presenting news programmes and news in any format’? .

One other point worth making; the Ofcom announcement does not push back hard against criticism from us and some academics about the quality of that audience research which it has relied upon to justify its position. Instead it promises to ‘explore conducting further research into audience attitudes towards news and current affairs on TV and radio’. 

So the next steps to watch out for:

  • Any response of any kind from Lisa Nandy as to whether Ofcom has met her test.
  • If it hasn’t, any sign of a way in which the regulator and the minister could find common ground, maybe fresh public attitude research.
  • Failing that, any sign that the Government does or doesn’t have the taste or the time for legislation?
  • Meanwhile any new complaints about GB News output which become test cases of Ofcom’s ‘Plan B’.

Some recommendations: Giles Winn’s newsletter ‘ScreenPower’ on Substack is a way of staying in touch with issues ‘where TV and Film meet politics and power’.Roger Bolton’s Beeb Watch podcast has an interview with Professor Stephen Cushion of Cardiff University about his research on the audience’s views on impartiality. 

THE GOVERNMENT ‘INTEND TO ACT’ ON OFCOM, DUE IMPARTIALITY AND GB NEWS. WHAT LISA NANDY SAID AND WHY IT MATTERS.

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During the four year long debate about whether GB News are breaking the rules requiring impartial broadcast news there has been a noticeably missing voice, a clear view from the Labour Party . That situation ended at 10.45 am on Wednesday 10th September 2025 when the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, was appearing before the CMS Select Committee. No transcript has yet been released so I have prepared one plus what I think are some key points. (If you want to see the video of the hearing it is here and the relevant section is at 10:45:00). 

Lisa Nandy was answering a question about the BBC, talking about its funding and its independence, when she began what looked like a deliberate pivot:

“And If I may on that issue of independence the other thing that the BBC finds very challenging and you know the committee will know that there have been several challenging issues and areas where the BBC has fallen short in recent months is that they are rightly held to the highest of standards but there has been a fracturing of the news media and there are different standards being observed in other places.

“So to take a very clear example of something that this government and I feel very strongly about, there is a real importance for the public when they look at the news to be able to understand whether what they are seeing is political polemic or news. At the moment that situation is currently completely unsatisfactory and there has been a blurring of political polemic that is presented as news on other channels. I am really keen that as part of supporting not just the BBC but all of our public service broadcasters that we make sure that we get those rules right . Ofcom is currently consulting on tightening the rules around politicians presenting news programmes and news in any format and that is something that we as a government strongly support. We will look closely at what Ofcom present to us but it is any area in which we intend to act”.

Labour MP Paul Waugh then asked: 

“By implication are you talking about GB News there, I mean obviously like me you’d be a strong supporter of freedom of speech and of the freedom of media and the press but at the same time if you switch on GB News at  night it is basically a newspaper on TV format which is not meant to be the Ofcom rules is it?”

The  Culture Secretary replied:

“I’ve had particular concerns raised with me by parliamentarians about the appearance of Nigel Farage presenting news programmes on GB News. I think that is a fair criticism from members of parliament of all political parties because the public have a right to know if what they are seeing is news and is impartial or is not and one of the challenges that then creates for public service broadcasters is that people lose trust in the news altogether. Now that is then a challenge for the whole country because the way in which people consume their news has polarised and fragmented and people are reading different accounts. Those shared spaces and that shared understanding is the basis of democracy is fracturing. I think that is very, very dangerous, a very dangerous position for a country to be in and it is something that we intend to robustly defend is the impartiality of our news. It is not for the government ever to stray into determining who can be featured on broadcast media and what is discussed, That is entirely a question for broadcasters whether its GB News, the BBC or others not least because they exist to hold the mirror up to government and subject us to scrutiny and that is essential in any democracy. But it is right and proper that as a government we ensure we have a proper framework so that viewers are empowered to understand if what they are seeing is news or is what they are seeing is political polemic presented as news”. 

Some key points:

  1. It may not have had the usual trappings of a major policy change, no pre-briefing, no press statement, but this was a Cabinet minister saying for the first time what, according to her, MPs of all parties have been telling her. Presumably that’s MPs of every party except Reform. 
  2. Why now? My hunch is that Labour have always thought this but decided they didn’t need to get involved publicly in what they saw as GB News helping Reform take voters away from the Conservatives. Maybe they’ve decided they are now losing out too and “intend to act”.
  3. How would they act? Ms Nandy said “We will look closely at what Ofcom present to us” on “tightening the rules”. There are two problems with that.
  4. Problem One: Ofcom doesn’t ‘present’ to Government on issues like this, that’s not how an independent regulator is meant to work. When Ofcom announce the outcome of their consultation on the rules (see previous posts) the Government will have to decide whether the problem has been solved or whether some other intervention is necessary, such as a tightening of the legislation.
  5. Problem Two: as argued in previous posts Ofcom’s current plan will not ‘tighten’ the rules because it does not address the core problem, the regulator’s current view that Nigel Farage does not present ‘news’ but ‘current affairs’. That’s why GB News says: “The Culture Secretary is clearly either mistaken or misinformed about the nature of GB News programming.GB News has never and does not use politicians to present news programmes. Politicians can present current affairs programmes.”
  6. Any clues on how the problem could be solved ? Interesting that the SoS mentioned ‘news in any format’. This underlines the point that the Broadcasting Code requires due impartiality in ‘news in whatever form’ not just news bulletins. A revised piece of guidance to the code could build on this and be more precise about what is ‘news in whatever form’ overturning Ofcom’s current view that News Presenter of the Year Nigel Farage doesn’t present news.
  7. Does Lisa Nandy’s involvement help or hinder the argument for the proper enforcement of the rules? The conventional wisdom is that she overplayed her hand on the BBC’s Glastonbury mistakes but learned that lesson. The qualifications set out in the second half of the full transcript of her remarks on impartiality seem to support this.
  8. Next step? Ofcom executives now have to make up their mind after the consultation knowing that whatever they decide the Government have a view and that all the other political parties (and that includes Reform) feel they have a stake in the outcome too. 

Ofcom digs itself into another regulatory hole as Farage returns to presenting on GB News.

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GB News has announced that Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party, who took a break from presenting ‘Farage’ during his successful local election campaign, will return to the channel in ‘early June’.This will create an unprecedented situation in British broadcasting. The leader of a political party who, according to recent polls, has a real chance of becoming the next Prime Minister will have his own programme about the day’s news three times a week from June until the next General Election campaign without any other party leader having to be offered any equivalent airtime.

If that isn’t unusual enough, Farage is returning to the TV presenter’s chair at the very moment the Ofcom regulations about his programme are in a state of limbo. Readers of my last blog will know that in March Ofcom lost an important court case, the first time this has happened on a matter of content regulation. Mrs Justice Collins Rice agreed with a challenge by GB News that Ofcom’s rulings that two GB News broadcasts in 2023 breached the code on ‘due impartiality and due accuracy in news’ were unlawful. Ofcom therefore decided to drop 11 investigations or rulings about broadcasts in which politicians read out news items. Most were on GB News, there were also some cases involving TalkTV and LBC. Ofcom has now published a consultation document on how it wants to change the regulations to solve the problems the court case identified. 

In my March blog I forecast that Ofcom would be tempted to confine the consultation to a narrow legal issue rather than take the opportunity to review how it got into this mess in the first place.The cause of the core problem is Ofcom’s decision, going back to when GB News started using politicians as presenters, that this was allowed because these weren’t ‘news’ programmes but ‘current affairs’. 

As predicted Ofcom wants to change just a few words but they will create a whole new row. Under the current Rule 5.3 politicians can’t be the ‘newsreader, interviewer or reporter’ in what Ofcom deems to be a news programme. But they can do interviews about the news of the day in what Ofcom regards as ‘current affairs programmes’. 

Now the regulator proposes that there should be one rule about politicians which should apply to ‘any type of programme’ and that includes ‘current affairs’ shows. And what should that one rule be?  Ofcom obviously has to define what exactly politicians can’t do in ‘any type of programme’. It has chosen : ‘No politician may be used as a newsreader, news interviewer or news reporter in any type of programme’. Let’s focus on that term ‘news interviewer’ which Ofcom has created but not defined.  What exactly is a ‘news interview’ or, for that matter, ‘news’ in Ofcom’s mind ? Is a ‘news interview’ an interview in a news bulletin, an interview with a news-maker in a ‘non-news’ programme such as ‘Farage’, any interview about the news of the day or any interview that makes news. 

It seems politicians won’t be allowed to do ‘news interviews’ whatever they are but could they do interviews about the news? When does one become the other? Could Nigel Farage interview GB News’s Political Editor, Christopher Hope, live about a story of the day, would that be a ‘news interview’? What would happen if Hope wanted to give viewers an important breaking news update, could he do that? Could Farage ask him a follow up question? 

Ofcom has dug itself into another regulatory hole. You do wonder who at Ofcom could have signed this off without realising the implications. 

Details of the consultation are here, the closing date is 23 June 2025.

Where does the Ofcom-GB News row go from here?

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The five ‘guilty’ verdicts by Ofcom against GB News followed by the broadcaster’s angry response suggest there could be an escalating battle between the two sides over the issue of whether politicians, especially MPs, can present political programmes. I doubt it but there could be a bigger, wider and even more important battle ahead.

The creation of GB News has crystallised two separate but sometimes connected issues:

  1. What programmes are serving politicians, especially current MPs, allowed to present on TV ?
  2. When presenters, be they politicians or anybody else, express strong opinions on topical matters how is due impartiality achieved?

Issue 1:What programmes are serving politicians, especially current MPs, allowed to present on TV? 

Nothing in the current law, Ofcom Code or Guidance sets out what a serving politician can present, only what they can’t:

‘Rule 5.3: No politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified. In that case, the political allegiance of that person must be made clear to the audience’.

So what is a news programme that a politician can’t present?

The Code itself doesn’t define a news programme but the guidance has this significant section:

‘1.8 In terms of this section of the Code (i.e. the requirement for ‘due impartiality’ and ‘due accuracy’), news in whatever form would include news bulletins, news flashes and daily news magazine programmes’.

One thing is clear : the authors of the guidance intended that the definition of a news programme should cover more than just a news bulletin. ‘News in whatever form’ seems pretty clear. But soon after GB News started inviting politicians from the right – but not the centre or the left – to present daily programmes about the political news of the day Kevin Bakhurst, then the senior Ofcom executive in charge of content regulation, published a blog justifying the practice.

He produced a definition of a news programme which restricted it to a news bulletin. By doing so he argued that the politicians on GB News were not presenting ‘news programmes’ but what he called ‘current affairs’. The term ‘current affairs’ does not appear anywhere in the impartiality sections of the Communications Act, the Ofcom Code on Impartiality or the Ofcom guidance. This was, in effect, Kevin’s Law, there was never a consultation or debate about it. Ofcom now relies upon what was in his blog (he has since left Ofcom) to support its judgements.

The recent Ofcom judgements against GB News show the confusion this has created. When Jacob Rees-Mogg delivers his Moggolgue on that day’s political news, much of which goes unchallenged in the programme, he is apparently a ‘current affairs’ presenter but the moment he mentions breaking news he has been transformed into a ‘news presenter’ which, of course, he’s not allowed to be. Hope you are still with me. The obvious solution is not too difficult, every time news breaks inside these programmes the presenter should hand over to the newsroom presenter. That’s if GB News wants a solution rather than escalate the issue for its own reasons.

But none of this solves the bigger problem as we approach the local and General Elections, should politicians be allowed to present programmes about that day’s political news whether or not you call them News or Current affairs.

The simple and best solution: politicians should not be allowed to present programmes which report and debate the controversial issues of the day especially political news unless there are exceptional circumstances. That’s what we thought the rules said so why not return to that.

Which takes us onto …

Issue 2; When presenters, be they politicians or anybody else, express strong opinions on topical matters how is due impartiality achieved?

This issue has been overlooked during the row about politician presenters but in fact it is equally important .

What the Code currently says:

‘5.9: Presenters and reporters (with the exception of news presenters and reporters in news programmes), presenters of “personal view” or “authored” programmes or items, and chairs of discussion programmes may express their own views on matters of political or industrial controversy or matters relating to current public policy. However, alternative viewpoints must be adequately represented either in the programme, or in a series of programmes taken as a whole. Additionally, presenters must not use the advantage of regular appearances to promote their views in a way that compromises the requirement for due impartiality. Presenter phone-ins must encourage and must not exclude alternative views’.

A number of points arise from this:

  1. The implication of the first part of the first sentence is that news presenters and reporters in news programmes may not express their own views on current controversies or current public policy.
  2. However  presenters of non-news programmes can do so subject to the condition that alternative viewpoints must be adequately represented in the programme or a series of programmes. This is explained in the guidance: 

‘1.48 Broadcasters are free to include ‘issue-led’ presenters in their programming, as long as they maintain due impartiality as appropriate. In clearly signalled ‘personal view’ programmes, many in the audience are comfortable with adjusting their expectations of due impartiality. However, in order to maintain due impartiality, alternative viewpoints should be adequately represented’.

How adequate does the representation of alternative viewpoints have to be? The Code and Guidance are not prescriptive about this. According to a Guardian article :

‘The broadcast code enforced by Ofcom is clear that opinionated hosts are fine but “alternative viewpoints must be adequately represented”. It has not specified what exactly that means, but GB News insiders believe 10-15% representation for differing views is probably adequate’.

Ofcom refuses to put a figure on ‘adequate’ but I believe the figure of 10-15% is an accurate statement of the view inside Ofcom and GB News. Is that a satisfactory figure for Ofcom when the 85-90% of political views expressed on GB News come from the same perspective in every primetime programme every night?

The implications for the General Election campaign are serious. Ofcom has still not grappled with this issue of whether leading supporters of the same side (only actual candidates are disqualified during election campaigns) can appear night after night giving an unchallenged monologue on that day’s news. On Ofcom’s current interpretation of its code it seems this can continue during an election campaign. Surely that has to change. Can we really have election campaign coverage presented by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage where they and like-minded folk are free to say what they like about other parties but Labour and Lib Dem supporters get only 10-15% of the programme airtime between them to respond?