Can GB News live up to the hype?

British TV viewers have never had so many channels to watch, yet they’ve also never had so little choice. The Brexit referendum exposed this lack of political diversity all too clearly.

As a panellist on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze for 20 years, I suppose I was something of a BBC luvvie. No doubt I was still seen as a bit of a maverick by some, but I was accepted on the media scene. However, when I casually mentioned back in 2016 that I was going to vote Leave, things changed. 

‘But you’re an intelligent, well-educated person, Claire’, said one senior producer. From that moment on, in studios and green rooms, I was greeted with a familiar sneer. From my position of privilege, it was hardly a problem. Yet that sneering was even more viscerally felt by audiences. And that sneer ultimately distorted media output.

In newsrooms that were virtually unanimous that Brexit was a backward, parochial and inexplicable idea, so-called public service broadcasters offered little insight into the mood of the public.