GB News 'risks inciting violence' against Muslims, major study finds

A major new report, based on a study conducted over two years, has concluded that television channel GB News "risks inciting violence" against Muslims, and "may have contributed to the toxic atmosphere surrounding last summer's riots".
Published by the Muslim Council of Britain's Centre for Media Monitoring (CFMM), the explosive new report alleges that "GB News hates Islam and Muslims".
The television channel, broadcasted from London and launched in 2021, recently overtook Sky News in viewing figures - averaging over 70,000 live viewers.
Reform UK leader and MP Nigel Farage, one of Britain's most prominent politicians, is a GB News presenter.
The channel has often been embroiled in controversy, with Ofcom - Britain's broadcast regulator - finding 12 times that it breached broadcasting rules.
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Now GB News faces fresh scrutiny, as CFMM's report - published on Tuesday - found that over two years, the channel mentioned Muslims or Islam more than 17,000 times in its output.
This accounts for a staggering 50 percent of total mentions on British news channels.
'Regularly demonises their beliefs'
The report alleges that GB News "rarely features Muslim perspectives", "fails to challenge Islamophobic remarks" and portrays Muslims as a "Trojan horse" in the UK.
It has an "excessive" focus on Muslims bordering on an "obsession" and "regularly demonises their beliefs", the report found.
Significantly, the report slammed the channel's coverage of the far-right riots which took place over the summer.
Violent disorder raged in cities and towns across Britain for over a week in late July and early August. The riots were triggered by online misinformation following a stabbing attack that killed three young children in the northern English town of Southport on 29 July.
False claims spread rapidly online that the attacker was a Muslim illegal immigrant.
What followed was a spate of racist and Islamophobic mob attacks. Mosques were targeted and so were hotels housing asylum seekers. Members of ethnic minorities were violently assaulted. Immigrant businesses in some areas boarded themselves up as the government pledged extra security for mosques.
The CFMM's report found that "GB News accounted for 62% of all clips on UK news channels that associated Muslims with the riots".
"GB News repeatedly framed Muslims as perpetrators rather than victims of violence, downplaying attacks on mosques and Muslim communities, contributing to a biased narrative," it said.
Call for more regulation
Despite Ofcom's frequent run-ins with GB News, the report calls on the regulator to take a "much more robust approach to the broadcasting of biased content that misinforms viewers, divides communities and may encourage violent disorder".
Former ITN executive and Ofcom regulator Stewart Purvis contributed to the report. After its publication, he said that the study "creates a clear challenge to Ofcom: has its deregulated model for broadcast news created an unintended consequence?
"Can a broadcaster be allowed to try to build its audience and political influence by a consistently negative portrayal of an ethnic community?"
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi called the findings "shocking" and said it is "imperative that both the regulator and the government take decisive action to ensure broadcasting platforms are not used to fuel hatred and extremism that plays out as violent disorder on the streets of Britain."
A GB News spokesperson said: "This inaccurate and defamatory report is nothing more than a cynical, self-serving attempt to silence free speech. It proves exactly why a news organisation like GB News needs to exist and why it is succeeding.
"We are concerned that at no point did this project of the Muslim Council of Britain contact GB News or its presenters to allow them to respond to these highly defamatory allegations."
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