Could Ofcom finally take GB News to task?

Might 2026 be the year Ofcom finally bares its teeth, previously assumed missing, and take GB News to task for its output?

The media is coming under increasing pressure to take action against the hard right channel after receiving numerous complaints about an interview it aired with Donald Trump late last year. GB News dispatched Beverly Turner to pitch him a series of less-than-penetrating questions in a rambling interview.

There was no mention of Jeffrey Epstein as Turner asked how he’d managed to do such a terrific job (“I almost don’t know what you’re going to do for the next few years. You’ve done so much in such a short space of time”), why London is so awful, how brilliant his new ballroom is going to be and why he is the greatest father of all time (“You’re obviously a really good dad”).

But Ofcom has been inundated with complaints about the unchallenged lies Trump repeatedly spouted during the interview, including asserting that man-made climate change was “a hoax”, that London had no-go areas for police and that the capital had “sharia law”.

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He made other claims about law and order and immigration that were either left unchallenged or effectively endorsed by Turner, a basketball presenter turned crackpot conspiracy theorist. When Trump said people are “being stabbed in the ass or worse”, she replied: “It’s true… It’s awful, it is. And it feels much safer [in the US].”

Among those calling for an investigation is Chris Banatvala, Ofcom’s founding director of standards, who told the Guardian he had “never seen anything comparable on a UK-established domestic broadcaster”.

And another complaint came from Bob Ward of the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and focused on Trump’s claims about climate change. Trump stated: “The whole thing is a hoax … but your country is one of the worst.” Ward said: “The GB News interview with President Trump was the most blatant example of a British media organisation collaborating with the Trump administration to undermine British democracy with this misinformation.”

Ofcom officials are understood to have spent the last few weeks examining at least three detailed complaints signed by tens of thousands of people, but have not yet decided whether to launch a formal investigation.

Even the minor slaps on the wrist the regulator has previously dealt the channel have drawn ire from its presenters, who have dubbed it ‘Ofcommunists’. Is it up for the fight this time?