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1 week ago
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GB News has been accused of risking inflaming tensions over crime committed by migrants after presenting unscientific research that counted the number of defendants with “foreign-sounding names”.
Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, has received complaints about a segment on the rightwing news channel last week that drew a link between “non-British” names and those in court charged with sex offences.
The segment was presented by Martin Daubney, sitting in for Nigel Farage on the Reform UK leader’s show on Monday last week. Daubney, a former Brexit party member of the European parliament, introduced what he described as “genuinely shocking” research. It was based on counting the number of “non-British-sounding surnames” at nine crown courts over a six-week period.
He said there was “no doubt the methodology is incomplete” but said this was because the government had refused to release data on the nationality of defendants.
One of the complaints to Ofcom was from Anna Sabine, the Liberal Democrats’ culture, media and sport spokesperson. She claimed that the way the figures were compiled was “unverified and frankly racist”. GB News described her complaint as “politically motivated”.
The research, compiled by the solicitor and regular media commentator Marcus Johnstone, suggested the average proportion of “non-British” sounding defendants over the period studied was 51% in Birmingham, 55% in Bradford and 56% in Snaresbrook crown court in east London. It also found that the average proportion of defendants charged with sex offences who had “non-British” names was 41% in Bradford and 31% in Sheffield.
Johnstone said: “We know that the analysis based on names is not scientific. We know there’s problems with that, but it’s the best that we can get at the moment because there’s no other data being obtained.”
It comes as the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has heaped pressure on Ofcom to do more to tackle “misleading or false content”. GB News is now regularly the leading news channel in the UK, ahead of Sky News and the BBC News channel. Its average audience last month was about 91,000 people.
Sabine has asked Ofcom to examine whether GB News has breached the broadcasting code, which states that “views and facts must not be misrepresented”. In her letter, she said research on the subject should be “grounded in verifiable data and handled with care to avoid misleading audiences or inflaming prejudice”.
“GB News peddled unverified and frankly racist statistics to thousands grounded in dodgy methods,” Sabine said. “Turning up to court and counting people with names that don’t sound British to you is no way to engage with the complex and sensitive topic of immigration.
“To air that on primetime TV is reprehensible, risking heightened tensions toward vulnerable communities. If GB News has broken the broadcasting code, they must face serious and swift action from Ofcom.”
A GB News spokesperson said: “Unlike some other broadcasters, GB News takes its compliance seriously. We will never let politically motivated complaints by political parties shape our journalism.”
An Ofcom spokesperson said: “We are assessing the complaints against our rules but are yet to decide whether or not to investigate.”
