TalkTV: We’re suing Ofcom for failing to stop hate and misinformation

Content warning: transphobia

Good Law Project is suing Ofcom for failing to investigate TalkTV over broadcasting transphobic hate and misinformation.

Last year, a Good Law Project investigation found 11 programmes broadcast by Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV in June 2025, where presenters and guests spouted hate about the trans community.

More than 21,000 people complained to Ofcom, and in March the regulator launched an investigation into one of these programmes. But it refused to look into all the rest (PDF).

Ofcom brushed aside complaints about a programme where Alex Phillips smeared supporters of trans rights as “allowing a man with a gert beard to put on a frock and go into the Brownie tent”, and attacked trans women as “hulking great perverts going into children’s toilets”. And she made the extraordinary claim – without evidence – that there was an “overlap of certain men who like to sort of dress up as women, and fetish, of actually getting a sexual kick” from being searched by female police officers.

The regulator also refused to look into programmes where presenters repeated the dangerous myth that gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and made the toxic claim that the Supreme Court has decided that trans women are men –  even though the judgment makes it very clear it was “not the role of the court to adjudicate… on the meaning of gender or sex”.

The broadcasting code is clear. Channels must protect the public from “harmful and/or offensive material” and that “views and facts must not be misrepresented”. And when discussing issues of “political controversy” and “current public policy”, they must do so with “due impartiality”.

But TalkTV made no attempt to stop the flow of transphobic hate and misinformation, or to present a balanced debate. While four hosts and a series of 11 guests declared anti-trans views and spewed transphobic hate in June last year, the channel didn’t invite a single person supporting trans people to these discussions.

And TalkTV’s misinformation runs deeper than transphobic hate – Murdoch’s mouthpiece also spreads fake climate news, with presenters denying proven climate science and claiming that “CO2 is not a threat to the planet”.

For Matthew Gill, Good Law Project’s lead solicitor on the case, this tide of hate and misinformation represents a “clear failure from Ofcom”.

“Over the last decade,” Gill said, “the consensus over climate action has shattered and there’s been a 186% rise in hate crimes against trans people. Meanwhile channels like TalkTV have been trampling over duties of impartiality with a flood of misinformation and hate. No-one should be getting a free pass to broadcast hate.”

The regulator wrote an 86-page report explaining why it was letting TalkTV off the hook, but we don’t think Ofcom understands its own rules. So we’re taking it to court.

The law is clear. It’s time for Ofcom to do its job and stop rogue broadcasters like TalkTV poisoning public debate.

For transparency we are publishing the following legal documents:

• Claim form
• Jolyon Maugham Witness Statement
• Pre Action Letter