 GB news the channel set up to promote free speech has already suspended one of its presenters That was for taking the knee This was the incident which started the row the benefit of hindsight I may have underestimated how close to the surface the racism still was I actually now get it and so much so that I think You know, we should all take the knee in fact Why not take the knee now and just say it's a gesture, but it's an important gesture and You know, it's not about me in the studio But for them to do that as footballers on the field Make sense because they're saying it's just not right and racism has no place in football and no place in modern Britain And those people who think that being English is Is okay with being anti-black people are completely misguided and they need to know that there is no space for them in Normal acceptable society That was Guto Hari is a former BBC journalist and a former advisor to Boris Johnson He's recently started hosting that show on GB news, which you just saw now You might be surprised to watch that was a kind of uncharacteristically thoughtful intervention from a GB news Presenter, but it caused a huge backlash from the channels snowflake audience. They proceeded to boycott the channel Now I'm going to show you a characteristic tweet from one of the very upset GB news viewers This is the Brexit Defense League. They have 27,000 followers and they tweeted Thousands turn off GB news as they begin virtue signalling to viewers and take the knee What happened to Andrew Neal's promise of anti-woke journalism GB news is no better than the BBC They deserve to lose what's left of their diminishing viewers Now of course it is difficult to know quite how many people actively boycotted the channel But one thing we do know is that whatever the reason not many people are Watching it indeed the Guardian have reported that at certain times this week GB news attracted Zero viewers Yes, zero viewers now. This wasn't at 2 a.m. Either it wasn't the graveyard shift Let's go to a section of that report business editor Liam Halligan and former Labour MP Gloria de Piero attracted no measurable audience to their show between 1 p.m. And 1 30 p.m. On Wednesday afternoon during the same time slot the BBC news channel attracted 62,000 viewers while Sky News had 50,000 people watching GB news's audience again briefly dipped to zero at 5 p.m during a late afternoon program co-hosted by ex BBC presenter Simon McCoy and former UKIP spokesperson Alex Phillips now you might ask what does it mean to say no measurable effect presumed you there was at least one person In Britain watching GB news at that time now. It is quite possible. There was One person watching GB news at that time ratings are worked out By a monitoring the devices of 5100 households who are representative of the overall UK viewing public and then they using that representative Sample estimate how many people would have watched each show so Here we can assume that no one in any of those 5100 households was watching GB news Now whether or not that was because the show is boring or because people were actively boycotting it It has clearly shaken GB news on Thursday They tweeted an apology for Hari taking the knee they wrote on Tuesday A contributing presenter took the knee live on air and this was an unacceptable breach of our standards Their standards are to be a little bit racist on or not be anti-racist I suppose now They've since gone further and Suspended Hari sources at the station told the Guardian sorry that Hari had been taken off air indefinitely and All of this shows that apparently the station which rails against woke mobs gave into demands of its own right-wing Mob who were upset that the channel was not a hundred percent reactionary a hundred percent at the time only 90 percent reactionary 90% of the time a friend of Guto Hari told the Guardian GB news is becoming an absurd parody of what it proclaimed to be Not defending free speech and combat in cancel culture, but replicating it on the far right Nasty, it's ridiculous to say he's breached editorial standards and almost certainly defamatory in reality It wasn't a breach of editorial code, but sacked for offending the lynch mob Now Aaron, I want to bring you in on this GB news is clearly a parody of itself Isn't it at launch saying we are a channel for free speech? We don't give it Woke mobs we're here to challenge them then the moment some of their audience don't like what they've seen they cave in they Sack or suspend or take off air one of their main presenters. It is unique I don't think there's another instance of a presenter on the BBC or channel for ITV doing what he did And there is an argument to be made that you know a presenter Contractually, you know, it's not a guest. It's not somebody who's just a guest present He is a guest presence, but he has some sort of long-term relationships to a news organization GB news obviously not a news organization But it claims to be I can see the argument and say well, you shouldn't do that again That's not what's happened. What's happened is he's basically been put on permanent gardening leave because there was an effective They factor boycott because there are so many racists that watch their channel and and actually the last thing they care about is freedom of speech They want to defend your freedom of speech Michael Just as long as they agree with you and if they don't then you need to shut the hell up Which is what happened with Gita Hari. So yes, it reveals a genuine weak weak point in Right-wing politics, which I think the left is getting better at we gave them far too much space and room on this for years Particularly because of Brexit, but these people actually care about freedom of expression less than anyone else not more less than anyone else And you know Rosa Luxemburg was that great left-wing defender of freedom expression I think as a socialist you have to believe in freedom of speech And the right, you know, it's just it's just been a it's been a means by which they've been able to insert themselves Into popular political conversations and give themselves a certain credit when they never deserved it because they really don't But they really don't believe in this stuff. They really don't believe in this stuff the amount of times Michael I've tried to invite on for interview a Right-wing thinker who's written a book or whatever they're an influential person and to talk about what they do They don't even they don't even respond. That's their rights. By the way, they can do that But we make an effort at Navarra media to talk to people that we don't agree with you yourself when you're hosting this You try and see an argument from both points of view, etc They don't do that. They don't do that because what GB news is Michael is it's not a media organization It's political communications which is to say what it does just like Fox news It finds a political argument which it disagrees with it finds the weakest possible part of the argument or the weakest advocate of the argument And it then Relentlessly attacks it. That's not news. That's not investigating. That's not informing your audience. It's propaganda And so of course, it shouldn't be surprised that propagandists aren't that interested in freedom of expression two different things I want to push back against the first thing you said there Aaron because you suggested that whilst it is Disproportionate to put Guto Hari on gardening leave it might have been reasonable to admonish him because he is a host He's not a guest and he was taking a verly political stance Now that of course would be fair enough if this was the BBC or the IT or ITV Obviously Robert Peston can't take the knee on ITV because they're not allowed to take any political stances on those channels But GB news set itself up precisely to be an opinionated station in all of their opening statements in all their founding documents They suggest we are going to have opinionated hosts. He was an express he was expressing an opinion That's completely allowed at GB news. And in fact, I want to can we jump to graphic 15 Fox? So this was tweeted by Andrew Neil after the launch night when Dan Woodton sort of railed Against government scientists saying they would you know obsessed and an addicted to power Completely spreading lots of misinformation about lockdowns and in response to that controversy Andrew Neil tweeted. I'm the flagship presenter. I did not say this if another presenter said this That's for them to defend. I don't agree with it But GB news believes in free speech even for presenters He then goes on it has nothing to do with hate. It's just wrong, etc. But the key part there GB news believes in free speech even for presenters So GB news explicitly if you're a presenter, you're allowed to have a political opinion all of their presenters express Lots of often quite extreme political opinions It's only if the opinion you express Is anti-racist that you get into Trouble since putting Guto Hari on gardening leave the channel's director of programming John McCandrew has resigned I'm sure you haven't heard of John McCandrew. So we're going to go to the Guardian report Which gives us some context here McCandrew a well-known figure in the television news industry who has a long track record at mainstream outlets including sky news and euro news Was considered to be the channel's second in command and played a key role in convincing many of the more established mainstream presenters to join Sources suggest he had come under pressure to dial down the focus on local reporting and free debate in favour of full-blooded cultural topics So chose to resign Um, also leaving is Jill Penlington and the guardians say she is again. She's a senior Producer she'd worked at CNN and and sky news So you've got lots of senior figures now leaving especially the ones who come from mainstream journalistic establishments people who wanted it to focus on local news and You'll remember that opening advert where they say we speak for all of England Now clearly the bosses have said no we want to go heavy on culture wars because that's the kind of thing we people tune into And now there's there's a big split within the organization Of course, we showed you and Andrew Neil tweet He's obviously been Topic of much speculation because after two weeks of hosting the flagship show and after being the chair of the Organization for its launch. He's already gone on an unplanned extended holiday People were also speculating because he hadn't tweeted about the organization for a couple of weeks But I think in response to that speculation today. He tweeted Startups are fraught and fractious GB news is no exception But the news channel is finding its feet and has a great future. Watch this space Aaron do you think that The Andrew Neil is going to follow these other senior executives and and leave GB news or do you think he's going to be in it for the long haul No, I think you I think you're bail. There are a few things That he's been involved in the past. There was a newspaper for instance called today There was the european newspaper not the new european These these were both from the early 1990s, which he was involved in and they both they both folded So he's been involved in failed media projects before Big money media projects so that that wouldn't be new Equally, you know, he was involved in the creation of sky news murdoch sent him over there from the sunday times He walked away. That wasn't a failure, but he walked away from it. He was sent to work Start up fox news. My god, this car was working for the BBC for 20 years. He didn't really make much impact there so Andrew Neil is a strange creature because he's a confection of effectively the rupert murdoch complex in print media particularly the sunday times and the BBC But other than that, he hasn't really been particularly successful. You know, he loves the free market but his broadcast career has Rested or effectively a massively well funded public service broadcaster quite ironic. So I I don't think there's any real Evidence in his in his resume that he'll turn this around I think he's he's he's going to walk away because he's he's quit similar projects in the past So I don't see why this would be any different The most pathetic thing of all michael is that he'll probably go back to the bbc The bbc will probably take him back. I just find the whole thing Fatuous ridiculous bizarre Um, I do think also the gb news. I mean it has two options at this point, doesn't it? It has, you know, I sort of Either it just collapses which may happen Um, like I said, there's been similar media projects in the past. It's generally been newspapers There was a paper that was launched by the left in the 80s called I believe it was called the news on sunday People can correct me in the comments A couple of million went into that. I think it only ended up producing maybe a dozen editions. It went out of business So This isn't new and of course because of the falling Costs of entry into things like broadcast media, particularly radio, particularly tv Maybe we should be expecting almost these kinds of ventures to be Increasingly common, but also increasingly likely to fail I always thought the approach was a very strange one. They should have started minimal Built up learn from mistakes recruit as you go Rather than week one day one anno zero That's it singing dancing, you know, the bbc news Zero calorie version, right, but very right wing I didn't I didn't think that was a wise way to proceed. They should have started like on a youtube channel Maybe got a dab license. Maybe did an lbc style thing that would have made more sense to me Which does suggest they don't know what they're doing