Britain’s media regulator Ofcom has concluded that an episode of the Mark Steyn show on GB News broke its broadcasting rules and was “potentially harmful and materially misleading.”
Ofcom ruled that the show “presented a materially misleading interpretation of official data without sufficient challenge or counterweight, risking harm to viewers.”
‘Fatally Flawed’
In its ruling (pdf), Ofcom said that the programme’s presentation of UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data and the way it used the data to draw conclusions “materially misled the audience.”It had received four complaints about comments made by the presenter that, the complainants said, drew “dangerous” and “fatally flawed conclusions” from UKHSA statistics.
The regulator concluded that this programme “incorrectly claimed that official UKHSA data provided definitive evidence that there was a causal link between receiving the third COVID-19 booster vaccine and higher infection, hospitalisation, and death rates.”
It added that this was “misleading” because the programme “failed to reflect that the reports made clear that the raw data contained within them should not be used to draw conclusions about vaccine efficacy, due to the biases inherent in those in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.”
“Given these misleading claims were broadcast as part of a factual programme on a news and current affairs service and may have resulted in viewers making important decisions about their own health, we concluded that the programme was potentially harmful and materially misleading, in breach of Rule 2.2 of the Broadcasting Code,” the ruling said.
‘Prescient’
On his own website, Steyn said that he “intends to appeal this and get it before a real court.”A spokesperson for GB News told The Epoch Times by email that they were “disappointed” by the finding and noted that “Mark Steyn has left GB News and has not broadcast on the channel for three months.”
“GB News exists to allow freedom of speech and freedom of thought to flourish. We believe a willingness to debate and disagree is vital for an open and honest society,” he said.
“We are disappointed by Ofcom’s finding. Our role in media is to ask tough questions, point out inconsistencies in government policy, and hold public bodies to account when the facts justify it. Mark Steyn’s programme did exactly that,” he added.
GB News said that the channel supports Steyn’s “right to challenge the status quo by examining the small but evident risks of the third COVID booster.”
“Mr. Steyn looked at evidence from the government’s own health data. He drew a reasonable conclusion from the facts. However, he drew only one conclusion. We accept that the data offered several valid interpretations, and he should have made this clear. Had he done so, the story would have remained within the wide freedoms that Ofcom’s Broadcast Code allows,” he added.
The news channel, which features presenters such as Calvin Robinson, Lawrence Fox, and Andrew Doyle, said it “chose to work in a regulated environment, and we take Ofcom compliance seriously.”
“In our 20 months and more than 11,000 hours of live broadcasting, this is Ofcom’s only finding against our television licence. It has not imposed a sanction. It remains our mission to challenge anyone who adopts a purely binary position on unfolding news events; their assumption that a government’s narrative is the only legitimate version of events, and that everything else is ’misinformation,'” said the spokesperson.
Naomi Wolf
Ofcom said that an additional investigation into an episode of Mark Steyn, which aired on Oct. 4, 2022, remains ongoing.The regulator is considering whether comments made during an interview with American author and journalist Naomi Wolf about the COVID-19 vaccine rollout raised potential issues under its Broadcasting Code.
Ofcome said that it had received 411 viewer complaints about Wolf’s comments.
It is believed that Wolf describing the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines as “mass murder” is being investigated.
The Epoch Times contacted Mark Steyn for comment.
