The headline contains plenty of Look Over There: “‘Proud to be a disruptor’: GB News faces growing pains as it tries to clean up image … Right-leaning TV channel to cut costs, hire new talent and enforce ‘discipline’ as it aims for growth”. Hiring new talent while cutting costs. How does that work?
Moreover, the photo at the head of the article is of former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage: if there is a move to “clean up [its] image”, its first problem is right there. Farage is a congenital liar, very much in the style of disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, whose dishonesty hit rock bottom in 2015.
Mr Thirsty stood up in the European Parliament and declared that the EU was practicing a modern-day equivalent of the Brezhnev Doctrine, going on to tell that the organisation had interfered in that year’s Legislative election in Portugal. Farage based his claims on comments by the country’s former President Aníbal Cavaco Silva. Along with lots of creative reinterpretation.
Cavaco Silva had not been leaned on by Brussels, or indeed anyone else. He was just being his usual increasingly grumpy self. His comments had everything to do with Portugal’s immediate post-Revolutionary internal politics (bad blood between the centre left and left), and nothing at all to do with the EU. He was not the only one sceptical about a centre-left plus left coalition.
This was typical of Farage: no research, shoot from the hip, and declaim the resulting mixture of ignorance and dishonesty loudly enough, and for long enough, to prevail. Do go on. “Alan McCormick, the GB News chairman … said the first step will be a training schedule designed to help GB News avoid repeatedly falling foul of the media regulator Ofcom’s broadcasting code … ‘Initial workshops, on the law and Ofcom, are vital for all with no exceptions’”.
Not when “Recent hires include Michael Portillo, the Daily Mail’s Andrew Pierce, and Camilla Tominey from the Telegraph”. Pierce is a shit. And Ms Tominey is a singularly unpleasant piece of work. It is rumoured that the member for times long past, Jacob Rees Mogg, will be joining them, as perhaps will the recently disgraced non-sexist Jeremy Clarkson.
And while the news is that the advertiser boycott of GB News may be softening somewhat, the channel is losing money. A lot of money. Its biggest investor pulled out and wrote off a significant sum when selling its shares. Worse, all its competitors - BBC News Channel, Sky News and TalkTV - have no issues with financial backing. The Guardian saw that one.
Their analysis noted “which begs the question of whether GB News can ever grow to a point that it is self-sustaining and no longer needs to turn to its backers for further cash injections”. It also mentions “The occasionally mooted potential merger with, or takeover by, TalkTV”. There is a precedent.
Rupert Murdoch’s then fledgling Sky TV operation merged with BSB, but in reality it was a takeover, with singularly vicious cost cutting and a series of sackings following in its wake. The current pot of money is £60 million, but without serious cutbacks, GB News will burn through that in short order. Will the broadcaster be picked off by the Murdoch mafiosi? Don’t bet against it.
The time of GB News was for a time, but not for all time. Good thing too.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
The last time anyone tried to clean up something so full of shit was when Hercules was tasked with sorting the Augean Stables. And while diverting the Thames through GBeebies' HQ and washing the whole lot of them into the North Sea would be hard on the fishies sometimes needs must.
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