{"id":952793,"date":"2026-05-11T14:42:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/952793\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T14:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:42:18","slug":"ofcom-to-investigate-gb-news-over-second-airing-of-trump-interview-gb-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/952793\/","title":{"rendered":"Ofcom to investigate GB News over second airing of Trump interview | GB News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ofcom is to investigate whether GB News breached broadcasting rules with a second showing of its interview with Donald Trump<\/a> after complaints that the US president\u2019s claims about climate change, Islam and immigration had gone unchallenged.<\/p>\n

A series of complaints were made over the interview, which the presenter Bev Turner conducted last November.<\/p>\n

The media regulator had previously announced it would not open an investigation into the original broadcast of the interview<\/a> on the rightwing network\u2019s US-based programme Late Show Live.<\/p>\n

In what is emerging as a test case in its approach to impartiality, however, it has announced it will investigate a November edition of The Weekend, a GB News<\/a> show that repeated the interview in full the next day.<\/p>\n

Trump was not challenged as he claimed human-induced climate change was a hoax and that London had no-go areas<\/a> for police. He said parts of the capital had sharia law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis programme featured an interview by GB News presenter, Bev Turner, with US president Donald Trump,\u201d an Ofcom<\/a> spokesperson said. \u201cWe are investigating whether it breached our rules on due impartiality and material misleadingness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ofcom has not said why it has opened an investigation into the interview\u2019s second showing and not the first, but it takes into account the content around an interview \u2013 such as panel discussions referring to it \u2013 as well as other context.<\/p>\n

The Weekend was broadcast during the day in the UK, so its audience would have been higher than for the original showing of the interview, which was shown overnight.<\/p>\n

The Guardian understands that some groups concerned about the interview\u2019s partiality had been examining a potential legal challenge to Ofcom\u2019s original decision against investigating it.<\/p>\n

Ofcom\u2019s latest decision comes after the departure of Michael Grade as its chair, though his successor, the former Channel 4 chair Ian Cheshire, has not yet formally taken up the role.<\/p>\n

Richard Wilson, the director of the Reliable Media campaign group and a complainant about The Weekend broadcast, said the investigation had taken too long to come. \u201cOfcom has quietly opened an investigation six months after the programme aired,\u201d he said. \u201cIn that time, GB News\u2019s social media clips of Trump claiming climate change is a \u2018hoax\u2019 have clocked up over a hundred thousand engagements online.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what regulatory failure looks like. Today\u2019s announcement is welcome, but it is a direct result of sustained pressure from the public, from MPs and from civil society. The new Ofcom chair has inherited a dysfunctional regulator, and parliament must ensure he is held to account for fixing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

GB News said it was \u201csurprised and concerned\u201d by what it described as Ofcom\u2019s \u201cdelayed decision\u201d over the Trump interview, pointing to the regulator\u2019s previous decision not to pursue complaints about its original airing.<\/p>\n

\u201cOfcom\u2019s U-turn over the repeat of the interview with the US president, Donald Trump, follows adverse commentary around its original decision by prominent critics of both Ofcom and GB News,\u201d it said. \u201cThe sequence of events inevitably raises questions around the rationale for reopening the matter at this stage. It also raises serious concerns around regulatory certainty, procedural fairness and the consistency of Ofcom\u2019s processes.<\/p>\n

\u201cGB News stands firmly by its journalism and editorial standards.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ofcom is to investigate whether GB News breached broadcasting rules with a second showing of its interview with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-952793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116556473638390060","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}