The Islamophobic bile spewed out by GB News is an extension of the vitriol unleashed by other more mainstream media, but must be held to account, argues Des Freedman

That GB News is obsessed with Muslims is probably the world’s least shocking headline. However, a new report from the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring provides disturbing insight into the routine Islamophobia that is exemplified by GB News but also familiar in more ‘mainstream’ parts of the media. It reveals some of the key tropes used in marginalising and attacking Muslims and demonstrates the pernicious impact of hate speech, not least given the far-right attacks on mosques and asylum seekers in this summer’s riots.

The report is based on a two-year study of the UK’s three national news channels, GB News, Sky News and BBC News. It finds that GB News accounts for nearly 50% of all mentions of Muslims and that the channel is fixated on Islamophobia, mentioning it nearly 1200 times in the two-year period and regularly rubbishes both the concept and the harms with which it is associated.

The report argues that during the riots, GB News platformed presenters and guests who regularly downplayed the violence against Muslims, deflected the role of the far right in instigating the attacks and described Islamophobic chanting simply as ‘football terrace songs’ as if anti-Muslim racism is just banter. 

The channel dedicated more than ten hours of coverage to the role of Muslims and Islam in the context of the riots and was far more likely to portray Muslims as the ‘perpetrators’ rather than ‘victims’ of violence on the streets of Britain. In Middlesbrough, where Muslim families were attacked, ‘none of the 28 references to Middlesborough on GB News referred specifically to the violence targeted at Muslim communities.’ 

The report describes how GB News is also preoccupied with the idea that the UK is a ‘two-tier’ society – not in the sense of two opposing classes or the stark differences between the poorest and wealthiest sections of the population, but simply because Muslims apparently receive preferential treatment at the hands of the police, the judiciary and other state institutions.

Time and again, presenters and guests are allowed to make assertions, without being challenged. For example the channel has broadcast claims that Muslims have a ‘grip’ on the Labour Party, that Islam is attempting to ‘replace’ Christianity, that it represents an imminent threat to the ‘British way of life’, and that Islamophobia is simply a fictional tool used by Muslims to silence their critics. Muslims, apparently, are a ‘Trojan horse’, surreptitiously attempting to take over British institutions and, in the words of one GB News presenter’ to ‘send us back to the dark ages with Sharia law’.

A hate channel

The report concludes that GB News is an ‘anti-Muslim hate channel’ that is fast becoming a ‘key vehicle for right-wing and far-right politicians to launch divisive polemics.’ It calls on the broadcast regulator to take firm action on this kind of hate speech and clear breaches of impartiality and dismisses the idea that ‘free speech’ should allow you to circulate clearly discriminatory language on the basis that it is simply ‘controversial opinion’.

The report makes it clear that GB News’ obsessive interest in and denigration of Muslims is both unacceptable and dangerous. But of course both the channel and this kind of language have not come out of nowhere.

GB News is owned by Sir Paul Marshall, a hedge-fund manager and the new owner of the Spectator magazine. He is also a man who, according to Hope Not Hate, has ‘repeatedly liked and retweeted extremist content from an array of far-right and conspiracy theorist accounts for months, endorsing tweets that call for mass-deportations and suggest a civil war between “native Europeans” and “fake refugee invaders” is imminent.’

While it draws on the presence of anti-migrant voices like Nigel Farage and Patrick Christys, GB News is simply dragging onto our screens the kind of xenophobic content that dominated the front pages of newspapers like the Daily Mail and Daily Express for years. ‘Anti-foreigner’ content mainstreamed by sections of the British media has now firmly transformed into Islamophobic coverage which seems to provide the (albeit fragile and loss-making) business model of GB News.

Muslims are now the most convenient group to dismiss as ‘un-British’ and unable to assimilate, and to scapegoat for the failures of successive governments to provide jobs, homes and security for everyone. As Lindsey German argued back in 2009, Islamophobia is the ‘last “respectable” racism with those perpetrating it propagating the deceit that they are against religion not race.’

GB News reacted to the CfMM’s report not by denying the allegations or providing counter-evidence but simply by arguing that it was a ‘cynical self-serving attempt to silence free speech’ (curiously, it recently ran a story calling for a ban on pro-Palestine marches which strikes me as a serious affront to free speech). It said that it was disappointed that it had not been able to respond in advance to ‘these highly defamatory allegations’ – precisely the way in which the channel itself operates when making defamatory allegations against Muslims.

GB News may not have the reach of its larger competitors but, together with its online presence, it amplifies some of the most poisonous Islamophobic voices and normalises dangerous narratives about who ‘belongs’ and who does not. As the report concludes:

‘The channel which regularly boasts of holding politicians to account has a particular reverence for Reform UK and is thus becoming a key vehicle for right-wing and far-right politicians to launch divisive polemics. The discussions around Muslims and Islam are more an exercise in regurgitating racist tropes and less a genuine critique of Muslim belief or culture.’

At a time when the far right is trying to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment and action – currently checked by anti-racist mobilisations and the weakness of far-right movements – the impact of GB News shouldn’t be exaggerated but neither should it be ignored.