UK Politics

According to the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), set up by the Muslim Council of Britain, GB News mentioned Muslims or Islam more than 17,000 times between October 2022 and September 2024. The channel accounted for almost half of the total mentions of Muslims or Islam on the UK’s three dedicated TV news channels – including BBC News, Sky News and GB News – during that period.

The channel serves up a constant diet of anti-Muslim sentiment, suggesting that Muslims receive special treatment, run the Labour party, and are planning to take over society from their mosques – echoing far-right conspiracy theories such as the “great replacement”.

Meanwhile, racism against Muslims is downplayed. For while Islamophobia was mentioned 1,180 times on GB News – 60% of all mentions on UK news channels – this was mostly to rubbish it as a concept.

The CfMM report concludes, simply: “GB News hates Islam and Muslims.”
[…] During this summer’s riots, the channel continued to spin its “two-tier society” narrative and framed Muslims as the perpetrators of violence, not its victims. According to the report, none of the channel’s reporting of the rioting in Middlesbrough mentioned violence against Muslims. By contrast, an incident in Birmingham in which Muslims attacked a pub and assaulted a customer received extensive coverage. GB News’s political editor Chris Hope said: “The government’s got to recognise there is violence on both sides.”

As for the rioters, GB News presenter Michelle Dewberry called them “white working class” Britons who had “the audacity to take to the streets about something they’re passionate about”, while admitting that attacking police stations and places of worship was “wrong”.

In some cases, presenters stretched the truth to portray rioters in the most flattering possible light. In one hair-raising example, presenter Darren Grimes said that a teenager had been jailed for “flying an England flag near a mosque”. In fact, the individual in question pled guilty to having firelighters and planning to set the mosque ablaze.

As well as airing far-right talking points, GB News presenters have defended far-right figureheads. When former Labour MP Luciana Berger described Tommy Robinson as far-right on her show, an irked Dewberry said: “You will say he’s on the far right, I can tell you how many people will disagree, many people will say that what he is, is somebody who has the balls to speak out and raise concerns about what many people are experiencing.”