GB News hates Islam and Muslims: report

LONDON: A comprehensive two-year analysis reveals GB News accounted for half of UK news broadcast coverage about Muslims and Islam, much of it with negative portrayals, potentially fuelling community tensions and contributing to civil unrest, researchers warn.

New research produced by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CFMM) shows structural and systematic bias in GB News reporting about British Muslims. The study, conducted over two years and on 54 pages, speaks of “excessive” focus on Muslims bordering on an “obsession” that “regularly demonises their beliefs”.

Stories about Islam are “overwhelmingly negative” and fail to understand the diverse nature of Muslim communities in the UK. The consistently hostile reporting, the CFMM report says, “risks inciting violence and discrimination against Muslim communities” and may have contributed to the toxic atmosphere surrounding last summer’s riots.

The report concludes that the channel “rarely features Muslim perspectives”, often “fails to challenge Islamophobic remarks” and portrays Muslims as a “Trojan horse” seeking to undermine British values.

The analysis compares GB News coverage of events concerning Muslim and Islam with the more balanced and far less negative approach of mainstream TV channels like BBC News and Sky News.

It concludes, “that GB News hates Islam and Muslims.” The report asks that the regulator, Ofcom, takes a much more robust approach to the broadcasting of biased content that misinforms viewers, divides communities and may encourage violence and disorder.

Over a two-year period, GB news mentioned Muslims and Islam more than 17,000 times in its output, accounting for almost 50 percent of total mentions on UK news channels. BBC News and Sky News accounted for 32 percent and 21 percent respectively.

Islamophobia has been referenced on GB News on 1,180 occasions accounting for 60 percent of all mentions when compared with BBC News and Sky News. Yet, rather than reporting on the very real and everyday cases of anti-Muslim hatred, GB News stories overwhelmingly are geared towards rubbishing the concept of Islamophobia.