Ofcom has concluded that an interview on the Mark Steyn show on GB News with Covid allegations violated its rules.
The media watchdog said the episode on October 4 2022 saw an interview between the Canadian author and presenter and guest Dr Naomi Wolf, who made ‘serious claims’ about the Covid-19 vaccine, including that its rollout amounted to a pre-meditated crime using the term ‘mass murder’ and was comparable to the actions of ‘doctors in pre-Nazi Germany’.
Ofcom stated that it received 422 complaints alleging that these statements were ‘dangerous’ and contained’misinformation’ that went ‘unopposed’.
It is the second’significant infringement’ of the code against GB News, and as a result, Ofcom has requested that the broadcaster attend a meeting with the media regulator ‘to examine its approach to compliance,’ the broadcaster revealed on Tuesday.
In March, Ofcom announced that one of Steyn’s programmes had violated its broadcasting guidelines.
‘We have been consistently clear that, under our rules, broadcasters are free to transmit programmes which may be considered controversial and challenging, or which question statistics or other evidence produced by governments or other official sources,’ said Ofcom in a statement that month.
‘It can plainly be in the public interest to do so,’ the statement continued. However, with this editorial independence comes the responsibility to ensure that viewers are not significantly mislead when depicting factual subjects.’
‘In this case, our investigation found that an episode of the Mark Steyn programme fell short of these standards – not because it exercised its editorial freedom to challenge mainstream narratives around Covid-19 vaccination – but because, in doing so, it presented a materially misleading interpretation of official data without sufficient challenge or counterweight, risking harm to viewers,’ an Ofcom spokesperson continued.
The broadcasting regulator stated that the documentary ‘incorrectly asserted that official UKHSA data presented definitive proof of a causal relationship between getting a third Covid-19 immunisation and greater illness, hospitalisation, and mortality rates’.
