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Latest 2 July 2025
GB News threatens legal action over reports promoting M&S
Rightwing broadcaster says its sudden enthusiasm for the middle classes’ favourite supermarket is ‘simply editorial content’ – and says it will sue if we suggest anything else.
When we discovered that GB News was running puff pieces about Marks & Spencer we were intrigued.
With help from our friends at Stop Funding Hate, we discovered GB News radio (nope, us neither) had been repeating – on more than 14 occasions – a clip of a presenter enthusing about its fashion range.
And not just on GB News radio. On the GB News website we found 30 articles promoting M&S products. Its brave reporting included headlines like “M&S launches new cake with shoppers left excited – ‘looks so yummy!’”, “M&S launches upgraded version of its beloved cake and shoppers confirm it’s ‘very good’” and “M&S shoppers are ‘running’ to stores to get their hands on rosé branded ‘the best out there’”. Twenty-four of the 30 articles it had tagged, rather sweetly, as “News”.
Stop racism at GB NewsChip in
One of the reasons why we were intrigued was because, under Part IV Chapter 1 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 it can be a criminal offence to fail to disclose that payment has been made for advertorial. So on 1 May 2025 we wrote to the great heroes of free speech asking for an explanation. They didn’t reply so on 2 June we chased – this time telling them we would (at the very least) write to the Competition and Markets Authority if they carried on ignoring us.
They responded by throwing their – one assumes, M&S – toys out of their pram.
Their splenetic response – which we would encourage you to read – claims the promotions were “simply editorial content that the company is perfectly entitled to publish/ broadcast.” And it added that:
“any attempt on your part to publish any material suggesting to the contrary – or any complaint raised based upon the same false factual matters – would be false and defamatory of the company and we reserve our rights entirely in respect of your threats in this regard.”
And it went on and on.
Well, we do suggest the contrary. There will be an explanation. Perhaps GB News is trying to woo M&S. Perhaps it doesn’t have any journalists left to write up actual news. Perhaps it is lying – after all its business model is monetising falsehoods.