Those who despise right-leaning GB News need no reason to attack it—some started boycotting before it had the chance to launch. But the British television channel, which has been running for just over two years, this week succeeded in handing over a good stock of ammunition, anyway.
‘Reclaim’ party leader Laurence Fox can always be relied upon to say something provocative (that is, offensive), which is surely why GB News hired him as a host and why he is often invited onto the channel for interviews. Talking to Dan Wootton, one of the station’s most high-profile presenters, on Tuesday evening, he asked of a young female journalist: “Who would want to s**g that?” Ava Evans, at whom Fox’s blatantly sexist comments were directed, said this has prompted her to receive threats.
There is a good conservative case against such talk, the essence of which it has been suggested GB News was expecting, and against other segments that have run on GB News in its time on air (how couldn’t there be?). But there is a worry here that the channel’s liberal critics will use the fallout to bolster their argument that GB News should be shut down altogether.
Responding to the story in Spiked Online, Brendan O’Neill said:
What Fox said about the political journalist Ava Evans on GB News … was odious. It was juvenile and sexist. Every decent bloke above the age of 17 knows you don’t speak about women in that way.
And yet, the fuming reaction to Fox’s comments, the middle-class mob that has formed with unholy speed to demand that GB News be officially sanctioned, is more objectionable in my view. It is an objectively greater menace to public life than the chauvinistic blather of a man on the telly. This hopping-mad army of aspiring censors scares me far more than Fox.
Tory MP and former minister Caroline Nokes has already called for GB News to be “taken off air.”
Ofcom, the official broadcasting regulator, is also looking into the incident after having received a “number of complaints.”
But, even if it was silly—or, at least, naive—to invite Fox (and to let him host, no less), GB News has responded to this spat professionally. It was quick to apologise for the “totally unacceptable” comments and to suspend Fox, also launching an investigation. It then suspended Dan Wootton who, after saying just how sorry he was for laughing at Fox’s remarks, was revealed to have found it all very funny.
Mr. O’Neill struck at the core of the issue, however, when he stressed that this approach “won’t stop the pile-on:
And that’s because the pile-on isn’t really about Laurence Fox. Or Ava Evans. Or sexism. It’s about the virtual left’s burning hate for GB News.
GB News Hands Critics Extra Fuel for Their Fire
Laurence Fox
Photo: ITS / Shutterstock.com
Those who despise right-leaning GB News need no reason to attack it—some started boycotting before it had the chance to launch. But the British television channel, which has been running for just over two years, this week succeeded in handing over a good stock of ammunition, anyway.
‘Reclaim’ party leader Laurence Fox can always be relied upon to say something provocative (that is, offensive), which is surely why GB News hired him as a host and why he is often invited onto the channel for interviews. Talking to Dan Wootton, one of the station’s most high-profile presenters, on Tuesday evening, he asked of a young female journalist: “Who would want to s**g that?” Ava Evans, at whom Fox’s blatantly sexist comments were directed, said this has prompted her to receive threats.
There is a good conservative case against such talk, the essence of which it has been suggested GB News was expecting, and against other segments that have run on GB News in its time on air (how couldn’t there be?). But there is a worry here that the channel’s liberal critics will use the fallout to bolster their argument that GB News should be shut down altogether.
Responding to the story in Spiked Online, Brendan O’Neill said:
Tory MP and former minister Caroline Nokes has already called for GB News to be “taken off air.”
Ofcom, the official broadcasting regulator, is also looking into the incident after having received a “number of complaints.”
But, even if it was silly—or, at least, naive—to invite Fox (and to let him host, no less), GB News has responded to this spat professionally. It was quick to apologise for the “totally unacceptable” comments and to suspend Fox, also launching an investigation. It then suspended Dan Wootton who, after saying just how sorry he was for laughing at Fox’s remarks, was revealed to have found it all very funny.
Mr. O’Neill struck at the core of the issue, however, when he stressed that this approach “won’t stop the pile-on:
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