Ofcom to investigate GB News over second airing of Trump interview

Ofcom is to investigate whether GB News breached broadcasting rules with a second showing of its interview with Donald Trump after complaints that the US president’s claims about climate change, Islam and immigration had gone unchallenged. A series of complaints were made over the interview, which the presenter Bev Turner conducted last November. The media regulator had previously announced it would not open an investigation into the original broadcast of the interview on the rightwing network’s US-based programme Late Show Live. In what is emerging as a test case in its approach to impartiality, however, it has announced it will investigate a November edition of The Weekend, a GB News show that repeated the interview in full the next day. Trump was not challenged as he claimed human-induced climate change was a hoax and that London had no-go areas for police. He said parts of the capital had sharia law. “This programme featured an interview by GB News presenter, Bev Turner, with US president Donald Trump,” an Ofcom spokesperson said. “We are investigating whether it breached our rules on due impartiality and material misleadingness.” Ofcom has not said why it has opened an investigation into the interview’s second showing and not the first, but it takes into account the content around an interview – such as panel discussions referring to it – as well as other context. …