Sunday Best: Will GB News succeed?
A round-up of Sunday's key stories and things you might have missed this week.
Image via GB News
Greetings TV fans (and Zoomers who prefer to Snapgram on Instachat)
Tonight’s launch of GB News is, depending on which side you take in the culture wars, either a breath of fresh air after all that suffocating wokeness on the BBC and Sky or a far-right assault on the truth that will inflict a Fox News style propaganda outfit on Britain. (Or we could all have got the wrong end of the stick and be about to witness the first broadcast of Bee Gees News, featuring Barry Gibb as a hard-nosed investigative reporter.)
I haven’t written anything about GB News yet because the only thing there’s less of a market for than a British Sean Hannity is boring, on-the-one-hand centrism. But undecided is pretty much how I feel about GB News. I’m always for more media, more journalism jobs and more debate about the issues of the day, but I can’t see myself sitting down to a daily diet of culture warring, even if it does come with snazzy graphics and theme music.
Of course, we don’t know yet that GB News will be the anti-woke analogue to Channel 4 News, banging on with towering certainty to an audience of the converted, but that’s certainly how its detractors have painted it. (How can you detract from something that hasn’t happened yet? Does that make it pretracting?)
Certainly, I’m aware of previous attempts to do something similar. Sun News was launched in Canada in 2011 as an alternative to the left-leaning CBC (the Canuck equivalent of the BBC). Sun was populist-right and spoiling for a fight. However, after only four years, it was out of business, having cost too much, failed to attract enough viewers and suffered carriage issues. As one Canadian commentator summed up the channel’s flaws: ‘It was Fox News without the budget or the talent.’
The other example is Sky News Australia, a brash, ultra-conservative network that bears almost no resemblance to Sky News London. With a line-up including right-wing pundits and former politicians (radio shock jock Alan Jones, columnist Andrew Bolt, former Liberal speaker and helicopter enthusiast Bronwyn Bishop), Sky News Oz runs fairly down-the-middle news coverage during the day and hard-right opinion-led programming in prime-time that would make Nigel Farage wince.
Yet while Sky News Oz works on its own terms — evening talker and Blokey Bloke McBlokerson Paul Murray is perfectly pitched to pissed off Aussie battlers, while ex-politico Peta Credlin is an icy right-wing fury machine — it took several years to build an audience, just as Fox did after being set up in 1996. Will GB News’s investors have the patience required if it turns out to be a similar slow-burner?
Against these sceptical-sounding notes, I would observe that the main broadcasters — especially the BBC — have alienated a section of their audience with news values that reflect the priorities and attitudes of London and other big cities but are at odds with how most Britons think about the world and go about their lives. (You know, those ‘lived experiences’ that are pivotal in every other context.)
Worse, they seem either not to know this break has happened or do know but don’t care. Either way, it’s not a good place for broadcasters — again, especially Auntie — to be in. National broadcasters ought to reflect the nation and not just those parts of it within walking distance of a Whole Foods.
So my mealy-mouthed, squishy-wishy, lily-livered liberal view on GB News? I hope it succeeds, but I hope it does so as the very best of populist TV: original, entertaining and genuinely different; a news and views platform that is serious but not po-faced, irreverent but not snotty, opinionated but not partisan; a channel that doesn’t just talk about ‘what matters to you’ and ‘where you live’ but brings to light stories from these places that otherwise wouldn’t get a hearing.
We will get our first hint of what kind of outfit GB News is going to be when it begins broadcasting at 8pm tonight. I plan to watch it before making up my mind.
Revolutionary, I know.
Headlines
The top stories from across the media.
G7 to donate one billion vaccine doses by next year
Boris Johnson called it a ‘big step towards vaccinating the world’.
Another terror attack is in the pipeline
Government warned that Islamists have too much influence in British prisons.
England win their Euros opener 1-0 against Croatia
A Football Thing has happened.
Sidelines
Stories that might have slipped your attention.
Bidder pays £20m for space trip with Amazon's Bezos
The would-be space tourist’s identity is being kept under wraps for now.
Kim Jong Un does not stan this
North Korean dictator says K-pop is a ‘vicious cancer’. So he’s not wrong about everything.
One is interested in one thing and one thing only: bent coppers
Turns out the Queen is a massive Line of Duty fan. Could the fourth man be an H-RH?
Battle lines
Stories to file under ‘yeah, there’s gonna be a row about this’.
Boris Johnson hints at delay to delay June 21 lockdown exit
England’s ‘Freedom Day’ could be postponed thanks to the Indian variant. This would not go down well with certain Tory backbenchers.
UK commits to climate action but not to new funding
Johnson — and the other G7 leaders — are talking a lot about tackling climate change but none seems willing to put their hand in their pocket. Cue anger from climate campaigners, especially in the year of COP-26.
Ban ministers from lobbying for five years (£)
The Sunday Times says the Committee on Standards in Public Life is preparing to make the call in light of the Greensill scandal. Being a minister would become much less lucrative, so lots of people won’t be happy about this.
It’s a small world after all
News from the international scene.
Spanish right rallies against plans to pardon Catalan separatists
Madrid unionists protest over socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s concession to pro-secession coalition partner.
Muslim community gathers to start healing
A Muslim family killed in London, Ontario, in what police say was bias-motivated murder, are laid to rest.
Saudi Arabia to limit Hajj pilgrimage
Saudi Arabia cuts the numbers allowed to attend the annual pilgrimage to Mecca due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
That’s just, like, your opinion, man
Op-eds, interviews, and general stuff that makes me go ‘ooooh’.
Edinburgh University is no longer a safe space for feminists
The Herald’s Iain Macwhirter finds a hostile environment for gender-critical feminists at one of Scotland’s leading universities.
What the England team doesn’t get about ‘taking the knee’
Sam Ashworth-Hayes says ‘taking the knee’ is an imported American gesture out of place in British football.
The great unravelling
Israel Hayom columnist Caroline Glick says the government replacing Bibi Netanyahu will undo many of his diplomatic achievements.
Shameless plugs
Everything I wrote this week. Except shopping lists. You don’t need to know about my pickled onion habit.
Where you see a ‘£’, it indicates the link is behind a paywall. Never fear, though: in the case of the Spectator you can read one article free as a guest, five if you register your email, plus you can subscribe and try a month for free.
What's wrong with Scottish education
My Scottish Daily Mail column, arguing that the latest exams crisis is a product of a schools system in disarray.
Why our constituency names should celebrate Britain’s history (£)
We should take a leaf out of Australia’s book and name parliamentary constituencies after great Britons from all walks of life.
Nicola Sturgeon gives you permission to question her
The SNP leader was her usual magnanimous self at First Minister’s Questions last Thursday. I sketched the proceedings for the Scottish Daily Mail.
The progressive imperialism of Keir Starmer’s Palestine policy (£)
Why is the Labour leader suddenly taking an interest in Palestine?
Shameless pugs
Huggy the pug stands accused of bullying her siblings and has undergone doggy behavioural training. Huggy denies all allegations.
Your anti-racism doesn't seem all that… anti
Exciting updates from the world of anti-racism. Similarities to the world of racism are purely coincidental.
When boycotters came for a Palestinian
In the first episode of her new Honestly podcast, Bari Weiss talks to Majdi Wadi, a Palestinian immigrant to the United States, whose self-built grocery chain lost millions and was forced to lay off dozens of staff after his teenage daughter's offensive tweets prompted a social media driven boycott.
Take a hike
National Geographic explains how — ‘with a little encouragement, guidance, and support’ — black and ethnic minority people can enjoy the great outdoors.
Yeah, that’s weird
Concerning further evidence that this timeline might not be quite right.
Jonah not do that?
A fisherman survives being gulped up by a whale while lobstering off the coast of Cape Cod.
I just took a DNA test, turns out...
This is wild. A woman takes a DNA test for some TikTok lolz, discovers a half-sister, helps the half-sister find her parents, only for the TikToker to learn her own dad isn't her biological father.
Seeds of destruction
A Plymouth man fails a drug test after eating Tesco poppy seed bread.
And finally
On this day in 1966, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Miranda v. Arizona, requiring police officers to read suspects their rights, thus opening a new chapter in Fifth Amendment jurisprudence and changing TV cop shows forever.
Hey Stephen, I enjoy your incisive commentary. I wondered whether you'd write a second piece on Taiwan and how the British Government ought to aid and recognize it in the face of PRC aggression. Your first article on Taiwan was quite heartwarming, and I'd like to know your further thoughts on Cross-Strait Relations.