What's the deal with gbnews?

Ok so I left Britain more than 15 years ago and have been living in Norway, blissfully unaware of what's been happening. I recently went back to visit family, where I notice that my dad's had a bit of a swing to the right, politically speaking. At some point he put on gbnews.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?

How popular is this blatant propaganda?

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

It's an entertainment channel, that happens to have "news" in it's name. So not subject to news rules. So it can have Tory MPs as presenters interviewing other Tory MPs as guests.

That OK isn't it? Not remotely dishonest and unbalanced....

They will get shutdown soon enough for this dishonest nasty stuff. Or, as they will say, "silenced by the woke main stream for telling the truth". It's kind of what they want.

UKFilmNerd ,
@UKFilmNerd@feddit.uk avatar

Sadly, when I fix apps on my dad's tablet, I notice he has YouTube subscribed to GBNews. I have to avoid any political discussion with him as he has gone down the rabbit hole and repeated many crazy theories which I debunk immediately, but I don't think he believes me.

GreatAlbatross ,
@GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk avatar

Also not helped by gammons migrating to the sunnier bits of europe, then talking about how GB news has it right.
So people in european countries get Barry, 60, as their reference for UK media, making it look more legitimate.

homesweethomeMrL ,

As a dumb American, it’s part of a continuing trend to support global fascism through batshit right-wing media outlets. Anything Murdoch owned and “other”. Here, it’s mutated into webcasts and twitter/“other” social media platforms, but the goal is always the same: Spin, deflect, gaslight, lie, deny, and keep oligarchs in power damn the cost. It’s ridiculously effective and very cheap, relatively speaking.

What you’re describing happened to all our friends and family in the late 90’s / early-2000’s.

See also: Australia, New Zealand, India, France, Germany, Ital- well, Italy might be organic, who knows ;)

Emperor , (edited )
@Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

It's basically the UK's Fox News but perhaps even less impartial as it let's politicians host shows - it definitely feels like an attempt to shift the Overton Window to the right. Quite why it hasn't been sanctioned by Ofcom is unclear.

There's a good overview here.

edit: this is the key part for me:

Around this time, the charity Hope not Hate published an investigation reporting that Paul Marshall, the founder of news and commentary website UnHerd and co-owner of what it called the “right-wing channel GB News”, had used his X account in a way that suggests “he holds a deeply disturbing view of modern Britain.”

The holding company that owns GB News is called All Perspectives Ltd. It has two major shareholders: Legatum Ltd and Sir Paul, who own 41.2 per cent of the company each. Marshall’s fortune is put at an estimated £800m from his career as a hedge fund manager. He does not post on X much. He does, however, retweet and “like” what Hope not Hate described as “notorious hate accounts such as the Britain First deputy leader Ashlea Simon, American anti-Muslim campaigner Amy Mek and the shady Italian anti-migration account Radio Genoa.”

Marshall, who is also bidding for ownership of the Telegraph and the Spectator, “has repeatedly liked and retweeted extremist content from an array of far-right and conspiracy theorist accounts,” the charity found. A representative for Marshall issued a statement noting that “as most X/Twitter users know, it can be a fountain of ideas, but some of it is of uncertain quality and all his posts have now been deleted to avoid any further misunderstanding.” What was “misunderstood” was not explained, but if the head honcho likes and retweets views like this, then the cast of eccentrics and Looney Tunes characters given airtime on his channel begins to make more sense.

Here is the Hope Not Hate article that draws from.

br3d ,

It also feels like a way to funnel bribes to politicians in plain sight, by paying them massive sums to rant at a camera with barely anyone watching

Emperor ,
@Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

From February:

GB News has paid Conservative MPs more than £660,000 in appearance fees and salaries since it launched, against just £1,100 to Labour MPs, Guardian analysis shows.

fakeman_pretendname ,

It had very poor viewing/listening figures for quite a long time, and was generally seen as a bit of a joke, but they've been growing alarmingly in the last year - though still comparatively low.

If you see a report saying "GB News hits 1 million viewers", note that this was corrected a few days later to "actually it was only 33,000".

So currently, it's generally not trusted or respected, and is kind of seen as a joke, but like UKIP, Brexit, Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, Donald Trump as US President etc, it's a dangerous joke that we should be taking more seriously.

breadsmasher ,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar
  1. Are you middle aged and unsuccessful?
  2. Do you blame every problem in your life on foreigners and immigrants?
  3. Want to have fear mongering propaganda blasted into your brain all day?

If so, youll love GBNews!

Colour_me_triggered OP ,

So how big of a problem is it?

9point6 ,

Not a huge one yet, it's mostly the already-gone daily mail brainworms lot that watch it.

But it has every intention (along with Murdoch's talktv) of being as much of a tumour on our society as fox news is in the states.

I think we need another round of stopfundinghate

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