High Court Dismisses Journalist Mark Steyn’s Case Against Ofcom

Mark Steyn outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London in June 2024. (Callum Parke/PA)

The High Court on Wednesday dismissed a claim brought by former GB News presenter Mark Steyn against Ofcom after the broadcast regulator twice ruled he had breached guidelines in discussions he had about COVID-19 vaccines.

Steyn, who now works as an independent journalist after departing the channel, said that his mainstream broadcasting career was effectively “killed” after the regulator found he had twice breached its code in 2022.

The Canadian journalist asked the High Court to quash Ofcom’s decisions, claiming they were not founded on proper or sustainable facts. His lawyer argued that both decisions amounted to a breach of his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

While Steyn’s legal team claimed the Ofcom rulings lacked “clarity and coherence” and risked an “obvious potential chilling effect,“ barristers acting for Ofcom argued successfully that the regulator was free to make its decisions to protect the public from ”potential harm.”

The decisions related to two separate broadcasts of Steyn’s primetime show on GB News, which opened with the presenter delivering a monologue.

Steyn’s lawyer, Jonathan Price, said during the court hearing that the rulings had “killed his career in the UK, and given rise to what he describes as crude defamation … recycled through the London papers as if they had the force of criminal convictions.”

Ofcom’s first decision concerned a show broadcast on April 21, 2022, relating to Steyn’s monologue on the rollout of the vaccines, based on UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data.

Lack of ‘Sufficient Challenge’

The watchdog received four complaints about the broadcast and in March 2023, found that it breached its rules as it “presented a materially misleading interpretation” of the figures “without sufficient challenge or counterweight,” which it said risked “harm to viewers.”

It also said that the programme “failed to reflect” that the UKHSA had warned that raw data on COVID-19 vaccines “should not be used to draw conclusions about [their] effectiveness.”

The second decision concerned Steyn’s show on Oct. 4, 2022, where he interviewed author and academic Naomi Wolf, who has published extensive work analysing the safety of the jabs, particularly relating to women’s health, their impact on menstrual cycles, and allegations of negative effects on fertility and pregnancy.

Wolf likened the vaccine rollout to “mass murder” which was comparable to the actions of “doctors in pre-Nazi Germany.”

The High Court judgment handed down on Wednesday by Mrs. Justice Farby, ruled that Ofcom was entitled to find that Steyn had failed to adequately challenge Wolf on the scientific basis on which she made her claims.

The regulator received 422 complaints following the interview, and found that GB News failed to take “adequate steps to protect viewers” from “potentially harmful content,” and claimed that Wolf’s comments promoted “a serious conspiracy theory.”

Claim of State Killing Was ‘Potentially Harmful’

The judge said the scope of the court did not allow her to engage with the claim that Wolf was promoting a conspiracy, but found that “by any standard of review, Ofcom was entitled to conclude both that Dr Wolf’s views were ’significant‘ and that they were ’alarming.'”

The judgment added that it was open to Ofcom “to regard the claim as controversial and as having the potential to have an impact on viewers’ decisions about their health. On this basis, Ofcom was entitled to conclude that the broadcast of the claim of State killing was potentially harmful.”

Author Naomi Wolf speaks at the Humanity Against Censorship rally in front of Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on May 19, 2022. (Mrs. Hao/The Epoch Times)

No statutory sanction was imposed for either breach, but GB News was requested to attend a meeting to discuss its approach to compliance with the code.

Steyn left GB News following contract negotiations when his former employers said he would have to be personally liable for paying any fines imposed on them because of claims made during his shows.

The court hearing on June 11 was packed, with many of Steyn’s supporters denied entrance. The journalist has been praised by many of the vaccine injured and bereaved for giving them a voice and allowing them to tell their stories without censorship.

Steyn has himself suffered serious health problems, including two heart attacks, since December 2022.

Wolf: ‘A Censorious British State’

Wolf, who was named in the lawsuit as an interested party, said in a statement to the court that Ofcom had caused “incalculable” damage to her reputation through a “vague smear,“ which she said was “false.”

She praised Steyn on social media platform X after he shared news of the judgment, saying: “@MarkSteynOnline even as he battles ill health, fights the Leviathan of a censorious British state that is trying to keep British people from making informed decisions about what they put into their bodies. He is beyond a hero...honoured to be named as a soldier in his battle.”

Formed in 2002 under the premiership of Sir Tony Blair and classed as a “quango,” or non-departmental government body, Ofcom takes its remit from Parliament and is funded directly by the broadcast companies it regulates.

In May 2020 Ofcom issued directions to broadcasters, advising them to “take particular care” when broadcasting, among other things, “statements that seek to question or undermine the advice of public health bodies on the Coronavirus, or otherwise undermine people’s trust in the advice of mainstream sources of information about the disease.”

The judge said in her ruling, “There is no evidence before me that Ofcom was predisposed to take the side of the Government during the pandemic.”