I was outraged at Ofcom’s recent ruling that the People's Forum, hosted by GB News recently, was deemed to breach its rules, claiming the show did not show due impartiality.
In a media world when far too often the major news networks, notably the BBC, exert extremely biased coverage, it seems abhorrent that this incident has been flagged, with potential sanctions placed on GB News as a result.
Over the last year alone, BBC has shown damaging and frankly untrue coverage towards India, Israel and expressed a predominantly left-wing slant, yet consistently continues to air in the same manner.
The world of politics is a dynamic and powerful environment, with each MP representing the interests of tens of thousands of constituents.
It is therefore right that we are held to account to ensure we are carrying out our duties to the best of our ability and with pure transparency.
The People’s Forum provides an exemplary platform to carry this out, giving ordinary members of the public an opportunity to ask top politicians the questions they want answered, an opportunity they would otherwise not get.
Bob Blackman was the Conservative MP for Harrow East
|PA
Ofcom, by law, is obliged to uphold freedom of speech and not to interfere with the right of all news organisations to make their own editorial decisions.
Despite this, Ofcom has attempted to silence the very premise of free speech when it threatened sanctions towards the news channel for giving people a voice.
The audience at the event was independently selected and their questions were not pre-approved or checked - they were entirely the responsibility of the picked members of the audience.
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Further, the Prime Minister was asked a range of challenging questions on an array of different topics, allowing him to express his views and rebuttals.
The Leader of the Opposition was invited to also take part in the event but duly refused.
If anyone is to be held responsible for the show displaying prejudice, it is down to Sir Kier Starmer.
GB News is a business and thus it would be ignorant to expect the channel to cancel all shows if there is not a representative from both major political parties - it would be completely unjustifiable.
I hope that going forward, Ofcom will reconsider its review of GB News and instead focus its attention on the truly biased news channels, indoctrinating viewers with swayed shows.