A radical activist group called the 'Good Law Project' claims to have analysed transcripts of 13 months of GB News programming. It gave GB News a very tight deadline to respond to a report they say they are planning to publish. It is unclear who, if indeed anyone, will read it.
Among the list of indictments levelled by these left-wing campaigners is that there is a prevalence of language on GB News about sexual abuse around the word Pakistani. I can’t imagine why.
They claim this is at odds with Government data, which they say reports that only seven per cent of group-based child sexual exploitation suspects had their ethnicity recorded as “Asian”.
Now, we all know that there was a scandal around these gangs and authorities covering it up – in June, the Casey report found that the failure of officials to collect ethnicity data had been a “disaster”.
This appears to be yet another attempt to somehow imply GB News is racist. And that is both boring and obviously silly.
But I want to talk honestly about Pakistani rape gangs. Because there is far too little honesty in our society. Truth is under attack.
For example: “What is a woman?”. It is not a question that any functioning society needs to ask itself. And such a society can definitely find better things for its courts to be doing than answering it.
Good Law Project founder Jolyon Maugham. Inset, Steven Barrett
|Getty Images
The campaigners claim “there are also many other world issues related to Pakistan and the Pakistani community – such as last year’s conflict with India – that you would expect to show up in GB News data (but it doesn’t) if GB News were indeed reporting news."
GB News is rather obviously reporting news. If it wasn't, its viewing figures would be rubbish.
This is about controlling GB News.
The Good Law Project claims: "GB News’ disproportionate focus on the people who arrive in the UK without the correct documents (i.e. “illegal” migrants) bears little relation to the reality”.
They cite Government figures which apparently say 43,000 people came to the UK via irregular routes in 2024, “less than 10 per cent of the 431,000 people who came to the UK through passport control”.
That’s because normal people care more about young men who come illegally by boat than doctors who get a visa legally. GB News report it because people care.
This is about controlling GB News.
Illegal immigrants are committing a crime. This is a simple truth.
The Good Law Project says “GB News' disproportionate concern with people not speaking English is wildly misplaced. According to the only comprehensive data about how well migrants speak English -- the 2021 England and Wales census - 90 per cent of residents born abroad say they can speak English well or very well.”
This claim comes from an assessment of how many times the word “speak” appears before “English” in GB News’ programming, after having selected “key terms of interest” to the GLP. I feel they would achieve more by collectively humming.
This is about controlling GB News.
And ultimately, the sorry, convoluted and far too wordy nonsense ends how this type of attempted control always ends.
It makes baseless and vague claims that GB News somehow, in some way ('Ooooo look at my jazz hands!') presents “a dangerously skewed picture of modern Britain” and that the programming has the “potential to stir prejudice against minority communities”. What total nonsense.
It always is. And it will fail.
Steven Barrett is a UK barrister, legal writer, and constitutional expert