The launch of a new right-leaning TV news channel in the UK descended into farce as a contributor suggested that convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was not a paedophile.
Less than a week into its existence, GB News invited Lady Colin Campbell – known as “Lady C”, a biographer of the British Royal Family – to speak as a contributor.
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In an item about the royals, presenter Dan Wootton, formerly executive editor at the Sun newspaper, asked her, “What do you say to all those folk who say, actually, it’s Prince Andrew who has damaged the royal brand far more than Harry and Meghan, with his association with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein?”
“Well, first of all, may I say that paedophile is a medical term, so is hebephile, so is ephebophile, and Geoffrey Epstein was an ephebophile,” said Lady C.
“He was a paedophile,” Wootton responded, before trying to divert the conversation away from whether or not the convicted paedophile is indeed a convicted paedophile. “Lady C, you must accept that he was a bad man, a dodgy character. Not someone Prince Andrew should have been associated with,” he said.
“I”m not saying he wasn’t,” she replied.
Lady C went on to call the focus on Prince Andrew a “distraction” from questions about former President Bill Clinton’s alleged links to Epstein. The former president took four plane trips with Epstein from 2002 to 2003 in connection with the Clinton Foundation, but has said he knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes at the time.
American financier Epstein pleaded guilty at a Florida state court to soliciting an underage sex worker in 2008. In July of 2019 he was arrested for one count of sex trafficking of a minor and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. He died by suicide in his jail cell in August of that year.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was trafficked by Epstein for sex when she was a minor, has alleged that Prince Andrew sexually abused her three times, which Prince Andrew has strongly denied. The Prince stepped back from his official duties over the scandal.
A debate over the scientific definition of paedophilia is just one of a number of embarrassing moments for the fledgling channel. GB News has been beset with technical difficulties, poor sound quality and prank callers since its launch. In one incident, viewers could hear presenter Wootton desperately asking his colleagues, “Guys, can you hear me? I need to know if I’m gonna have this auto-cue.” Viewers have also complained about how dark and dingy the studios look.
In another clip, banging that sounds like construction work can be heard in the background as Wootton tries to read the news.
In another segment, presenter Gloria De Piero tries to ask correspondents about how their first day is going, but cannot be heard and is met with silence.
Presenters on the channel have also been caught out by submissions from viewers giving clearly fake names, such as “Mike Oxlong” and “Mike Hunt”, much like Bart Simpson prank calling Moe’s Tavern as “Ivana Tinkle”.
This is all despite the millions of pounds ploughed into the channel by its extremely wealthy backers.
The channel has received funding from Paul Marshall, the multi-millionaire Brexiteer and former Lib Dem backer who helped drag the party to the right on economics. Marshall is also the publisher of UnHerd, another right-wing media project. GB News received further funding from Legatum, a Dubai-based investment firm that pushed for a hard-Brexit in order to bring about more financial deregulation.
Launching the channel on Sunday night, presenter Andrew Neil – who is also chairman of the high-Tory Spectator magazine – said GB News will “give voice to those who have felt side-lined or even silenced in our great national debates”.
But much of its output is made up of tedious and well-worn “culture war” talking points. After the England national football team’s 1-0 victory over Croatia in the Euros, newspaper front pages focused on striker Raheem Sterling’s goal and the positive start to the competition for the Three Lions. Nevertheless, on GB News’ Great British Breakfast show, a world-weary Kirsty Gallacher said, “It really should have been the scoreline that made the headlines this morning, but yesterday the England team once again took the knee before their game with Croatia…” before a leading segment discussing how divisive the anti-racist gesture supposedly is, rather than talking about the scoreline.
Broadcast news in the UK is governed by impartiality rules under regulator OFCOM. GB News is the first news channel in the UK to launch after making its political leanings explicit. Commentators have speculated that the channel will resemble Fox News in the US, but GB News has been keen to play down this comparison. OFCOM has already been inundated with complaints about GB News, in particular a Wootton segment in which he claimed that politicians and health officials want to use the coronavirus pandemic to create an “ultra-cautious biosecurity state”.
Several brands, including Kopparberg and Ikea, have pulled out of advertising on the channel.
The channel shared BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) figures, showing that 164,400 viewers tuned in on its opening night – higher viewing figures than the BBC News channel or Sky News.
However, it’s unclear how many of those viewers were just tuning in to see how bad of a car-crash the launch would be.
