Toby Young: So yeah GB News and Mark Steyn. I've been thinking about this, because, you know, I used to be on Mark's show every week and I like Mark. And as general secretary of the Free Speech Union, several people have contacted the FSU and said isn't this something you should be getting involved in? And just to put this in context, we did get involved with trying to rein in Ofcom at the beginning of the pandemic. So when Ofcom issued its coronavirus guidance, which we felt was very heavy handed. We challenged Ofcom in the High Court and tried to apply to judicially review the guidance, which we thought amongst other things, was a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects free speech. And we didn't get very far. So we got to an oral hearing. So we did at least get to stand in front of a judge and make an argument but the judge rejected our application. So we... so we did do what we could to try and rein in Ofcom. And it may be that because we challenged Ofcom and the judge wasn't wholly unsympathetic, although he did in the end, throw it out. It may have we think stayed the hand of Ofcom and made them less intrusive and authoritarian than they were inclined to be.
But I'm not sure....I mean, one thing about this is I think that you know, Ofcom set the rules. And if you're a licensed broadcaster, you have to follow those rules. So even though I can understand why Mark is upset that GB News effectively said look, if you want to come back on, you're going to have to agree to play by these rules. I'm not sure GB News had much choice given that there are these two complaints against Mark's show that are currently being investigated. And given that, you know, the regulator can, Ofcom can fine its licensees over a million pounds, it that did that I think in 2008, they fined ITV over a million pounds. So the financial stakes aren't trivial. And also if too many strikes if Ofcom, you know, records too many strikes against a licensee, they can then revoke the broadcaster's license, and that's obviously something that GB News has to be concerned about. I mean, I think the villain, if there is a villain in this piece, is Ofcom not GB News. And I think, you know, it may well be that the Free Speech Union challenges Ofcom's decision in the case of these two investigations, but it hasn't yet pronounced its verdict. We don't know what those decisions are. So it'd be premature to kind of stick our oar in at this point. And to be fair to Ofcom, as I'm doing a piece about this for The Spectator this week, so I called Ofcom earlier today to put a few questions to their press officer. They pointed out that, that many complaints have been made about many of Mark's programs, including the program in which he interviewed various people who'd suffered vaccine injuries, or whose loved ones had died, seemingly as a consequence of taking the COVID vaccines. They received lots of complaints about those programs, and didn't investigate any of them. They recently received a complaint about a Neil Oliver program, they didn't investigate that.
It was pointed out to me that they had investigated and upheld complaints against the BBC and ITV. So it's not as if they're singling out, you know, GB News for this punishment beating. So I think it would be premature to attack Ofsted [Ofcom] but it may well be, we'll have to see what their adjudications are. And if we conclude that they are holding GB News to a higher standard than the BBC or ITV or Sky News, when it comes to, you know, coverage of the vaccines and the pandemic response more widely, then that could be the basis for a complaint then.
James Delingpole: You're sounding quite like you're part of the establishment there Tobes. I'm quite surprised. I mean, I always thought that that like me, you were a journalist and commentator who sort of took sides against when you saw manifest injustice, that you went for it but here you are sort of saying if Ofcom is the villain. I mean, surely there's no doubt that Ofcom is the villain. I mean never mind how....I agree with your with your point that GB News has been bullied into this position. But here we have what is essentially the bully boy arm of an increasingly unaccountable, authoritarian state, which is using....which is deploying powers of censorship, that one hitherto would not have expected to see outside the Soviet Union or in Mao's China or whatever. We're living in England, Tobes, we're not living behind the Iron Curtain. And yet, here is this organization, Ofcom, with this sort of slightly sinister, Orwellian name, deciding that that no, no broadcaster, no broadcaster that wants to be on TV, of any kind, even if even if it's a sort of niche channel for sort of skeptical people like I suppose GB News wanted to be. Not even GB News, apparently, is now allowed to report on probably the most pressing issue facing our country today, in that lots and lots of people have been injured by vaccines, which they weren't, which aren't even vaccines, that they were encouraged to take by government bullying campaign. And they've now suffered injury, a significant number of them, a proportion of them, have suffered injury or death. And here is the government's chief censor, saying you cannot report on this stuff. And if you do report on this stuff, we are going to make sure that the person who does it is going to get censured and lose his job. That seems to me the scandal here. And the idea that you can just say, well, on the one hand and the other just seems to me, an abnegation of your responsibility. I mean, of the very things that made me want to become a journalist, speaking truth to power, but which you seem to have abandoned. I mean, I'm a bit disappointed, I have to say.
Toby Young: Well, if what you just said was true, then I would be more up in arms about it, but it's not. GB News are not being prevented from reporting about vaccine injuries. It's....they haven't....you know, there have been many complaints about GB News programs.
James Delingpole: Well how many complaints? And where do you think those complaints originally came from? You don't think they were whipped up by....
Toby Young: Hold on James, but Ofcom has said we don't think GB News is in breach simply for reporting about vaccine injuries. So that's not the issue. I mean the two segments on Mark's show that Ofcom are investigating. So the first one was a segment in which he showed a graph, I think it was some data, I think, compiled by the UK Health Security Agency, showing that deaths amongst the triple jabbed were higher than deaths amongst those who hadn't been vaccinated. And he extrapolated from this, that having the jabs not only didn't protect you from COVID-19, but actually made you more likely to die. But what he hadn't understood was that the graphs were showing deaths of all causes higher amongst the triple jabbed, rather than just deaths from COVID-19. And one of the reasons for that is because people who've been triple jabbed are more likely to be much older than the unvaccinated. So not all that surprising that, you know, deaths from all causes are higher amongst the triple jabbed than the unvaccinated and, you know, Jamie Jenkins, the former ONS statistician actually criticized Mark when he broadcast that and Mark then subsequently had him on the show. And essentially, you know, allowed anyway, someone else to put a different point of view, but there were four complaints about that. And the complaint was that he'd been using statistics in a misleading way. I think Mark honestly misunderstood them.
James Delingpole: There may have been a complaint. But is it genuine? Is it justified? It sounds like it was the vaccine establishment.
Toby Young: But it wasn't....in that instance, it wasn't that they were investigating a complaint that Mark reported on vaccine injuries, which is your initial claim, that Ofcom is being used by the government to prevent GB News from reporting on vaccine injuries. That's not the case. In the first complaint, nor is it the case in the second.
James Delingpole: Hang on a second, have you watched what Mark has said about why he lost the job?
Toby Young: Oh no, no, I went back and watched that program
James Delingpole: That his position has been made untenable, he's been told that he's got to have an Ofcom liaison officer, somebody you know, some in house, I think Ofcom's bitch, I think was the phrase he used, Ofcom's bitch policing his every move in a way that I don't think well, I mean, obviously, there's no need for such things at the BBC because they push Ofcom's agenda anyway. But you've got this organization, news organization, which is which is daring to be lightly critical of the official narrative, and it gets shat on by Ofcom. And you think that's a reasonable thing? Because of the excuses that Ofcom have given you.
Toby Young: Well, no, I mean, I'm just telling you the details here, you appear to have misunderstood what's happened, they're not investigating...
James Delingpole: You call them details, I call them excuses, you are excuse making for the establishment.
Toby Young: You're bragging, bragging about....you talked about, you know, being a journalist and why you wanted to become a journalist. I mean, surely, if you're a journalist, you want to find out the facts before kind of leaping to a conclusion. And I'm telling you GB News is not being investigated for reporting on vaccine injuries. They're, being investigated in this one instance that was why they're being investigated....for supposedly misleading use of statistics, and they haven't upheld the complaint yet, bear that in mind. So you may be jumping the gun a bit there. And the second segment that they're....
James Delingpole: Steyn is gone, Tobes, he's gone already. How can I be jumping the gun when he's already been ousted?
Toby Young: You're jumping the gun, if you're claiming that Ofsted—Ofcom—are going to uphold this complaint. I mean, you seem to have misunderstood what the complaint was about. And you're also assuming that Ofcom are going to uphold the complaint. They haven't done that yet. But the second complaint, James, is about Mark's interview, an interview he did with Naomi Wolf, I think in October, in which in which Naomi Wolf described the mRNA vaccines as a bio weapon, compared I think, the likely death toll from the vaccines to the Holocaust, and accused the public health authorities of mass murderer, and that received over 400 complaints. And that's being investigated too, so that's not just a simple drawing attention to vaccine injuries, that's going beyond drawing attention to vaccine injuries and making various assertions about you know, the motives of the public health authorities.
James Delingpole: It's called comments, Toby. It's called comment.
Toby Young: I think it would have been fine for him to have featured her saying those things if there had been, you know, someone else putting a different point of view or if he tried to contextualize them in some way when she was saying them. And I think that's why Ofcom's investigating the complaint and again it hasn't been upheld yet.
James Delingpole: Every other news channel already puts it across the point of view that you're complaining may not have been represented on that particular segment. I mean, the weight of the media is entirely on the side of this official narrative, which you're now helping to bizarrely to prop up.
Toby Young: I'm not defending the official narrative. I just think you're exaggerating, so far anyway, the role that Ofsted [Ofcom] is playing in maintaining that narrative, I don't think it is being as heavy handed or authoritarian in this instance, as you're accusing it of being, particularly as it hasn't yet published, it hasn't yet made a decision about whether....
James Delingpole: Well when Melanie Dawes steps down, maybe she'll keep the seat warm for you because it sounds like....
Toby Young: I think on...yeah, Mark has left the channel. But, you know, I think he could have negotiated with GB News had he wanted to.
James Delingpole: He was put in an untenable position, how could he negotiate with the contract they were imposing on him?
Toby Young: Well, I spoke to a lawyer about that, James, I mean, so the contract they were imposing was....the critical thing, which clearly was a deal breaker for him, was GB News saying you have to be liable for any fines that are levied against the channel by Ofcom as a result of breaches of the broadcasting code on your segment. I think he could have pushed back. I mean, if he just shown his contract, maybe he did show his contract to a competent employment lawyer, they would have said that that clause is unenforceable. And in addition, I think Ofcom would have frowned on GB News for trying to insure against, you know, being fined by them in that way. I mean, obviously, licensees are going to behave in a less compliant way, if they think they can simply pass on the cost of being fined or insure against it. So I think Ofcom would have had something to say about that. So I think he could have pushed back and said, look, this is just untenable, let's negotiate. There must be another way of, you know, ensuring that I have due regard for Ofcom's broadcasting code and do what I can to protect the reputation of the channel from, you know, complaints and so forth. But it sounds like he kind of flew off the handle or decided this was a kind of....I mean, he's been in the wars, he's had two heart attacks. So maybe he could have been handled differently, a bit more delicately, a bit more diplomatically, I don't know, I don't know the story. I don't know enough of the details. But I think, to my mind, it felt like what GB News were asking of him was the opening salvo in what was intended to be a negotiation. And Mark decided he didn't want to enter into that negotiation, and immediately kind of blew up the relationship by using the B word to describe a member of staff at GB News and calling the managing director a liar. So in a way, you know, I don't think he was.....I don't think he had no choice but to react in that way. And I'm not sure I....and I do understand GB News's position in wanting him to [James: Of course you do.] you know, comply with the broadcasting regulations, because if he doesn't, and, you know, complaints are upheld again, and again, not only will they lose money, but they risk losing their broadcasting license. These are the rules and GB News has to play by the rules. And so do its presenters.
James Delingpole: Yeah. Obviously, it's a bit like saying, well of course, those pesky Uyghurs have to understand that the Chinese authorities have said that criticism of the Chinese regime is unacceptable, and therefore they should accept whatever is coming to them, because those are the laws. And that's what you're doing. You're just essentially endorsing the status quo, even though the status quo is really unjust, and it's bizarre. I mean you are a commentator, you're not a kind of, you know, you're not William, you're not editing The Times.
Toby Young: Well, I think another consideration here, James, is that, you know, from a free speech point of view, GB News is by some distance, the most pro free speech of the news broadcasters. On a variety of cultural issues it is much more closely aligned with us than it is with the people on the other side. So it seems kind of, you know, a bit foolish to pick a fight with GB News over this issue and condemn GB News out of hand and to say it's no different from the BBC or ITV or Sky.
James Delingpole: Who was doing that?
Toby Young: Well a lot of people who've been condemning GB News's...
James Delingpole: I'm not, I'm condemning Ofcom, I think Ofcom is the problem. They're appalling. I'm just surprised that you're not you're not more appalled because it seems to me it's wrong.
Toby Young: I think I mean......I think if Ofcom upholds these complaints, then it may well be, you know that that decision could be judicially reviewed if we think GB News is holding, sorry, Ofcom is holding GB News to a much higher standard and people who've complained about for instance, public health panjandrums saying on the BBC, that the vaccines provide you with 100% protection and prevent other people getting infected and so forth. If someone's complained about that, Ofcom didn't investigate that complaint, then there might well be a case for accusing Ofcom of having a double standard, but that's you know, that's down the road. I think it would be premature to accuse them of that now. It would weaken any credibility we might have. It would be as though we completely prejudged this without actually considering the adjudication. If decided, you know, that Ofcom is the villain before you know they actually published what they decided to do about this or made....
James Delingpole: I'm prepared to take that risk, Toby. I think Ofcom most definitely is the villain and this is like something out of Soviet Russia. I think it's dismal.