GB News should lose its licence, says ex-Sky News editor Adam Boulton

The former Sky News political editor Adam Boulton has said GB News should lose its broadcasting licence, as he accused Britain’s media regulator of failing in its duty to protect impartial television news. Boulton, who was Sky News’s political editor for 25 years after the channel launched in 1989, said he believed it was too late to revoke GB News’s broadcasting rights, despite bringing a partisan brand of coverage to British television since its debut in 2021 . Asked whether he would strip GB News of its licence, Boulton said: “Yes, I would. I think Ofcom has failed in its duty as the regulator … It seems to me that there have been clear violations of the due impartiality rules consistently from GB News. “I think it’s probably too late now, is unfortunately my conclusion,” Boulton told the Beeb Watch podcast. “But should GB News have been given the status of a news broadcaster alongside Sky and ITV and Channel 4 and the BBC ? In my personal view, no. That’s why we had a regulator. But I think the regulator has failed.” His comments follow a series of high-profile complaints about the rightwing channel’s coverage, including an interview with Donald Trump last year in which the US president was not challenged over claims about Britain, the climate crisis and Islam . Adam Boulton called for a ban on ‘presenticians’. Photograph: Adrian Green/Persuasion Communications/PA This week, Ofcom announced it was investigating a programme that featured a repeat of the interview. …