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Latest 17 March 2025
Ofcom launches investigation into GB News over LGBTQ+ slur
Mick Sinclair / Alamy Stock Photo
Broadcast that received more than 70,000 complaints over a lie linking the LGBTQ+ community to paedophilia will be subject to a formal investigation.
Ofcom has launched an investigation into comments “related to the LGBTQ+ community” made by a GB News presenter on 22 January, after a Good Law Project campaign saw a record number of people complain to the communications regulator.
During the broadcast of the news discussion show Headliners, a presenter repeated a dangerous lie linking LGBTQ+ people to paedophilia.
We launched an online tool helping the public make a complaint to Ofcom about this latest example of GB News platforming toxic rhetoric. A record 71,582 people filed complaints in this way – almost 17,000 more than the 54,595 who complained about Piers Morgan in 2021.
Sky must stop funding hate on GB NewsTake action now
Some supporters spoke out about the channel using the LGBTQ+ community as a “political football… the age old tactic used by the far right to distract people”, while others made the point that the channel put “the lives of everyday people at risk”.
The regulator announced the investigation in its latest bulletin, adding on social media that the probe would look into “comments made by the presenter related to the LGBTQ+ community”.
GB News has responded to Ofcom’s investigation by claiming it is defending “free speech”. But the slur linking the LGBTQ+ community with paedophilia has been branded “one of the oldest, most pernicious and most stubbornly ineradicable falsities or myths of homophobia” by the High Court (PDF).
Good Law Project’s head of campaigns and communications, Agustina Oliveri, welcomed this overdue investigation into a “channel of hatred”.
“Ofcom has been letting GB News get away with broadcasting racism, misogyny and homophobia for too long,” Oliveri said. “It’s time for the regulator to do its job and make sure that media barons stop profiting from monetising hate.”
We have now broadened this campaign to put pressure on organisations that fund GB News through advertising. One of the major advertisers on the channel is Sky, which also acts as a broker for other companies to advertise on GB News.
More than 19,800 people have emailed Sky’s CEO to demand that she stops funding hate speech by advertising on GB News.
Sky has yet to give any response.
- Get involved in stopping hate on GB News by emailing Sky’s CEO now