Ofcom investigates GB News over its ‘Don’t Kill Cash’ campaign

The media regulator Ofcom has launched an investigation into GB News after a complaint about its Don’t Kill Cash campaign.

The move, which follows several other investigations into the broadcaster, comes days after GB News launched a campaign to stop what it called the UK’s transformation into a “cashless society”, urging people to sign a petition and ask the government to introduce legislation to protect the status of cash as legal tender until at least 2050.

The campaign, which argues that “strong vested interests” are pushing for cash to be replaced by electronic payments that “enable third parties to track you and your spending”, has attracted more than 160,000 signatures since it launched on Monday.

Those signing up can opt into sharing their email address to allow GB News to send marketing emails from the channel, which states: “This may include news alerts and adverts from GB News and selected third parties.”

While newspapers often run campaigns and back political parties, UK broadcasters are banned from doing so under the terms of their Ofcom licence. On Friday Ofcom said that its rules, backed up by the Communications Act 2003, forbade broadcasters from expressing “views and opinions […] on matters of political and industrial controversy or current public policy”.

GB News’s willingness to push opinionated television news in a manner more often seen in the US has left Ofcom playing catchup, attempting to apply a broadcast code written in a different era dominated by the BBC and ITV.

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Ofcom is also investigating GB News’s use of Jacob Rees-Mogg as a newsreader. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

On Thursday the broadcaster ran a story on its website with the headline: “Leftie activists hate GB News and they hate you,” in which the presenter and former Apprentice star Michelle Dewberry complained the channel was subject to a “advertising boycott” because “politically motivated online pressure groups have made it their life’s work to try to close us down”.

The media regulator this week launched investigations into GB News and TalkTV’s use of serving politicians as presenters. It received 40 complaints objecting to the former Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg acting as a newsreader on a breaking news story after a jury’s finding that Donald Trump had sexually abused a journalist.

The regulator is also examining whether Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV broke rules requiring news and current affairs to be presented with due impartiality, over comments by the Alba party leader, Alex Salmond. Salmond hosted a discussion in April on whether the Scottish National party, his former party, was “hold[ing] back the course of independence”.

The latest investigation is a further example of the media regulator’s struggle to deal with the channels’ tactics. GB News is already being investigated for allowing two serving Tory MPs – a married couple – Esther McVey and Philip Davies to interview the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, about his spending plans. The regulator is looking into whether the MPs, who each earned about £1,000 an episode for the show, included a broad range of views when interviewing their colleague. Other MPs with shows include GB News’s Lee Anderson, who recently filmed a promotional video for his broadcast on the roof of parliament.