Tag Archives: GB News

Are the Russell Brand allegations proving government is stifling social media businesses?

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Russell Brand: after it was revealed that a UK Parliament committee had written to his social media platforms, calling for his income to be cut off – despite the fact that he has not been convicted of any crime – it has emerged that governments seem to be regularly exerting pressure on social media platforms to stifle political commentary that conflicts with their views.

This has escalated quickly – after the Commons Culture, Media and Sports chair wrote to online platforms in a bid to take Russell Brand’s income away from him, her fellow Tories are now clamouring to have GB News taken off-air because of Laurence Fox.

The charge appears to have been led by former Sky News mainstay Adam Boulton:

But he was quickly joined – on the same episode of the BBC’s Newsnight – by Tory MP Caroline Nokes:

Some might say, “Sauce for the goose” – at least GB News is attracting the same opinions as Russell Brand.

But now let’s look at some other reactions to those calls for GB News to close. Here’s Tim Montgomerie, founder of the Conservative Home blog – and therefore also a Tory:

And now Nile Gardiner, former aide to Margaret Thatcher and therefore also a Tory:

So countries that shut down news networks are authoritarian and tyrants?

What does that say about the CMS committee chair, Tory Dame Caroline Dinenage, trying to shut down Russell Brand’s channel?

You might suggest that there’s a bit of a difference between a network and a one-man show, but then, we know Brand isn’t the only social media commentator facing shutdown – don’t we?

Is this acceptable?

Twitter/X keeps trying to take followers away from Peter Stefanovic. Is it because he’s a left-wing commentator who publishes facts that the right wing headbangers don’t want you to know?

If you don’t think so, you need to come up with a reasonable alternative explanation. What is it?

Apparently, this is an international phenomenon. I noticed in a piece on the Brand controversy, a YouTube-hosted show called The Comments Section suggested that its parent organisation, The Daily Wire, had faced calls for it to be de-platformed by the US government.

“Guys, this has been happening – this isn’t new,” said host Brett Cooper.

“Literally a month and a half ago, the Daily Wire found out that the US Government had been writing the Facebook specifically … saying ‘Is there anything you can do to, you know, limit their posts a bit during the election cycle – it’s really not great for us, could you limit them?’ Asking a social media site to censor our posts.

“This is happening; it’s all politicised.”

If you’re a regular follower of Vox Political you’ll know that This Site’s readership has mysteriously plummeted, so I tend to believe that Facebook certainly does have the ability to restrict the readership of particular users/pages.

If this is happening internationally, and to organisations with as much clout as the Daily Wire (it’s quite big, you know), then I think it might be time for us all to get together, pool our information and take it to such authorities as may exist to police such matters.

In the UK, I don’t even know if there is an organisation with a duty to ensure that businesses relying on social media exposure don’t get censored for no reason.

I’ll let you know what happens. While the allegations against Russell Brand are vile, it seems something useful may come from them.

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If you don’t know why Laurence Fox ranted about Ava Santina you need to see this

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Andrew Neil, Ava Santina and Laurence Fox: if you want to know why Mr Neil is in this image, read on.

I wasn’t going to comment about this until it turned out there was a genuine public-interest side to it.

You may be aware that has-been actor and failed politician Laurence Fox has been suspended by right-wing channel GB News over comments he made about Politics Joe journalist Ava Santina (also known as Ava Evans).

What’s strange to me, as a reporter myself, is the media coyness about what she said to trigger his rant.

It was prompted by a discussion about comments she made about men’s mental health during an appearance on BBC Politics Live, discussing whether there should be a minister for men.

Here’s the relevant segment:

For clarity, Ms Santina said: “I think it feeds into the culture war a little bit, this minister for men argument. [Mental illness] is a crisis that’s endemic throughout the country, not specific to men. And I think a lot of ministers bandy this about to – I’m sorry – make an enemy out of women.”

Afterwards, she admitted: “I was a little rash on my anti-minister for men comments which I do regret and am actually very interested in a brief for a minister on young men’s mental health.”

I’m not convinced by this retraction. If she said it, she meant it. This afterthought suggests that she has realised she misjudged the national mood and wants to ingratiate herself with the public again.

Still, knowing the above, take a look at Fox’s outburst. I’ll use the link from Ms Santina’s ‘X’ account:

What does a journalist’s physical attractiveness have to do with whether men’s mental ill-health might justify them having their own dedicated Cabinet minister?

It is entirely inappropriate to denigrate another’s personal characteristics during a discussion of such a topic, just because their politics and yours don’t correspond.

To make a similar – and appropriate – comparison, we might refer to the original chairman of GB News itself, who left the BBC to set up the channel that provided a platform for this rant, and who therefore seems more likely to be up Mr Fox’s political alley.

Would Laurence Fox shag Andrew Neil?

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Is the NatWest/Nigel Farage row another enormous scam to profit the super-rich?

Nigel Farage: why is the loss of his bank account a scandal and not the removal of many accounts belonging to Muslims? Is it because super-rich people can profit from it – including his GB News boss?

Why have we seen such a media outpouring of sympathy for Nigel Farage over the closure of his Coutts & Co bank account when the same thing has been happening to Muslims since the turn of the century and they’ve had no coverage?

Is it because Sir Paul Marshall, owner of Farage’s employer GB News, runs a hedge fund that took out a “short” position on Coutts’ owner NatWest’s stock – bet that the bank’s market price would fall? Stock has now fallen by £850 million and Marshall’s hedge fund – Marshall Wace – has made a fortune.

And is the Tory government also preparing to sell its 40 per cent shareholding in NatWest and an incident that artificially lowers the price would mean any of their friends and donors who bought those shares would be able to make a very fast profit when they rise after the scandal is over?

That would be very corrupt, wouldn’t it?

Here’s what has been happening over at GB News:

In its report, The London Economic adds that “it’s only a snip of the billions under management at the firm and is likely to have been computer driven” – but how do we know that?

It seems clear that Sir Paul Marshall has been in a position both to know in advance about the situation with Farage’s bank account, to use it to give the bank bad publicity and engineer a share price collapse, and to profit from that collapse via his hedge fund.

That would be insider trading, which is illegal. Anyone convicted of it faces unlimited fines and/or up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

It depends on when Farage’s account was closed, when news reports of the closure appeared, and whether GB News was among the first to report it (it doesn’t even have to be the first). Did Farage mention it to his boss?

Next:

This makes sense as the Tory government has ‘form’ in this regard; it sold shares in Lloyds Bank at a loss in 2017.

Finally, and possibly damningly: perhaps the biggest reason this whole affair smells worse than a pile of Haddock that have been dead for four weeks is that the media have known about people having their bank accounts closed for no reason since some time around the turn of the century.

That well-respected (and then right-wing) reporter Peter Oborne spent years trying to get UK news outlets to report on the plight of innocent Muslims whose accounts were closed in this way, to no avail.

I’ll let him explain:

So we have a situation that has been ongoing for two decades or more, of which reporters, editors and bosses in the mass media are well aware; it becomes a public scandal only when a high-profile political figure who is now a presenter on a news channel is disadvantaged by it – allowing the owner of that channel to make millions of pounds from it; and it lowers the share price of a commercial organisation in which the UK government has shares, leading to speculation that those shares will be sold to make a profit for people who are already very rich.

Are you prepared to shrug and say it all seems perfectly innocent to you? Or would you like an investigation of what may be considered fraud under UK insider trading laws?

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Right-wing news channel falsely accuses Jewish cartoonist of making anti-Semitic cartoon

Michael Rosen: He’s Jewish but has previously been accused of anti-Semitism over his support for Jeremy Corbyn. Now he has been accused of anti-Semitism on an entirely false premise.

We seem to be living in an age of accusing Jewish people of being anti-Semitic.

It’s utter insanity – this time perpetrated by right-wing current affairs channel GB News against Jewish poet and former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen.

It seems GB News presenter Katherine Forster accidentally attributed a cartoon in The Guardian to Mr Rosen, when it was actually by Martin Rowson.

Unfortunately for all concerned, this particular cartoon featured a depiction of recently-resigned BBC Chairman Richard Sharp – who is Jewish – with a box marked Goldman Sachs, where he used to work, that contained what appeared to be a puppet of the current prime minister Rishi Sunak, an animal that looks like a squid and a CV – while Boris Johnson, on a high pile of an unidentifiable substance (the Independent seems to have reckoned money) calls out encouragingly to him.

The cartoon has been described as having “antisemitic imagery” such as “outsized, grotesque features” alongside “money and power”.

Mr Rowson has apologised profusely for the image, as reported in The Independent:

“Satirists, even though largely licenced to speak the unspeakable in liberal democracies, are no more immune to f****** things up than anyone else, which is what I did here.

“I know Richard Sharp is Jewish; actually, while we’re collecting networks of cronyism, I was at school with him, though I doubt he remembers me.

“His Jewishness never crossed my mind as I drew him as it’s wholly irrelevant to the story or his actions, and it played no conscious role in how I twisted his features according to the standard cartooning playbook.”

The Guardian has also published an apology on Twitter:

And the cartoon has indeed been removed.

GB News seems to have been more reticent about apologising for its own transgression.

Mr Rosen contacted the channel – via Twitter – at 4pm on Saturday, and requested a response detailing what it proposed to do about the error:

He repeated his request almost a quarter of an hour later:

From the tweet that follows, it seems GB News deleted its tweeted clip showing discussion of the cartoon, but not before it had been viewed 79,000 times.

At around 5pm, Ms Forster tweeted an apology to Mr Rosen and said the tweet had been removed. He responded with gratitude for her words, and with a statement crystallising his own view – that GB News should broadcast a correction along with its own apology:

He had already requested a correction by the time he had responded to Ms Forster:

By now, his supporters were making suggestions of their own. Mr Rosen, in the spirit of fairness, said he was waiting for GB News to respond:

Then he even put up a suggested wording:

That was at 5.36pm, Saturday, April 29. I’ve seen no apology/correction from GB News – although it has published a story about The Guardian‘s apology for the cartoon.

That piece does not mention or apologise for the broadcast comments about Martin Rowson.

This Site has contacted GB News to find out what the channel intends to do – if anything.

If no apology is forthcoming, it will be up to Mr Rosen to decide whether to take the matter further.

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Lee Anderson’s second job hypocrisy

Lee Anderson: he’s the one on the right, pictured with another controversial man at the moment, Boris Johnson. Strangely enough, ’30p Lee’ has not, to This Writer’s knowledge, criticised Johnson for the many other paying engagements he takes on and it seems unlikely he ever will, now that he has also taken a second job.

Tory MP ’30p Lee’ Anderson, who once said MPs should not take second jobs but should quit Parliament altogether before seeking a higher-paying career… is taking a second job.

He’ll be drawing down £100,000 a year on a GB News TV show:

The hypocrisy is clear. I don’t have video clips of Anderson saying the words quoted above, but here’s one of him saying MPs who can’t live on their £84,000-a-year salary should get a job as a lorry driver instead:

The funny side is, Anderson wouldn’t even do that.

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Dead cat alert: yesterday’s man talking about Uighurs on a failing news channel is a DISTRACTION

‘Demand better’: That’s what the sign says on the wall behind Vince Cable and that’s what you need to do – demand better than him.

Apparently certain people are making a fuss because former Liberal Democrat minister Vince Cable said the Uighurs haven’t suffered genocide under China.

He did this while having a pint with swivel-eyed goon Nigel Farage on GB News, after publishing an article in The Independent.

Who cares what Cable thinks?

He’s yesterday’s man. So is Farage.

The whole stunt looks like it was cooked up to boost ratings for a failing far-right fake-news channel.

I hope no Vox Political reader is weak-minded enough to let Cable, Farage or GB News lead them by the nose in such a cynical way.

Source: Shouting at China over alleged Uighur genocide won’t help – instead the West must find a way to work with them | The Independent

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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