Nikolay Kalinin suggests Andrew Neil’s new channel GB News will be neither Great nor British
It’s expected that Andrew Neil’s forthcoming news channel that aims to appeal to “the vast number of British people who feel underserved and unheard by their media” will launch on 31st May on Freeview, Freesat, Sky, YouView and Virgin Media.
In spite of GB News being branded as the “British Fox News,” there’s barely anything British about the channel overall when it comes to who funds its operation. As Patrick Barwise, management professor at London Business School, noted: “This may come with a wrapper saying it’s GB News and patriotic, unlike the ghastly BBC, but have a closer look at where the money is coming from.”
One of the biggest investors in GB News is Discovery Inc. which operates the Discovery Channel and is based in New York. Another prominent investor is the Dubai-based Legatum Limited, whose Legatum Institute think tank set up a commission that promoted a no-deal Brexit and made Vote Leave CEO, Matthew Elliot, and Vote Leave chair, Gisela Stuart, fellows at the institute.
It has also been discovered recently that Legatum Limited has ties to Charles Koch, an American businessman who has donated to the Republican Party and to an organisation called the Heartland Institute. Heartland has advocated climate change denial and even claimed that such change may be beneficial.
The Koch network has also funded the National Review Institute, which owns the conservative publication National Review – which recently has been on a mission to demonise the Black Lives Matter movement as much as possible.
Let me remind you that the channel we are talking about here will have to follow impartiality rules of Ofcom, yet also paints itself as the alternative media outlet that everyone in the UK have been waiting for ever since the BBC – according to them – has decided to become “woke.” Still, they expect us to be fine with their operations being funded by foreign companies and individuals, some of whom plainly promote what I’d argue is especially harmful ideology.
Pictured top: Chairman Andrew Neil has described GB News as “a fresh approach to news in Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.”
