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@docrussjackson
Jan 7, 2023 • 20 tweets • 11 min read • Read on X
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#THREAD on GB "News", mainly courtesy of @PrivateEyeNews.

The polarising, increasingly unhinged, & dangerously irresponsible multimillionaire hedge-funder funded GB "News" has become a rich breeding ground for harmful conspiracy theories, effectively becoming the UK's Fox News.
The channel was only founded in 2021 amid much-regretted promises from then frontman Andrew Neill that it would not become a "British Fox News" but has slid deep into #misinformation, #disinformation, & pure #propaganda, often about the COVID pandemic.
In one recent show, presenter Patrick Christys praised a largely discredited new book which claims Covid was genetically engineered and leaked on purpose, with help from US chief national scientific adviser Anthony Fauci and cover-ups by UK scientists.
The book, by one Andrew Huff, has been treated sceptically by other media outlets, but Christys and guest Dominique Samuels claimed it proved that so- called Covid conspiracists were "completely vindicated" on a host of issues.

ecohealthalliance.org/2022/12/ecohea…
Dan Wootton interviewed 'online personality' Andrew Tate, who was allowed to refer to an "imaginary pandemic" and deny that hospitals had been overrun without any challenge. (Tate has been arrested on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group.)
Off-air & away from @Ofcom regulation, presenters share absurd conspiracies. Samuels tweeted praise for conspiracy theory documentary Died Suddenly, which falsely alleges the Covid vaccine was created by the global elite to kill people & depopulate earth.
Meanwhile, on his personal podcast, GB "News" presenter Mark Steyn said the slowing of the birth rate of "#Aryans", who built "western civilisation", had been accelerated by Covid vaccines. He openly celebrated the fact that @Ofcom does not regulate his personal show.
In 2018, Sky News Australia sparked outcry after it broadcast an interview with a far-right nationalist extremist who has expressed his admiration for #Hitler: then Sky News Australia CEO Angelos Frangopoulos said “It was an error of judgment". Frangopoulos is now CEO of #GBNews.
Another purveyor of wacky Covid opinions is Nick Dixon, a host of GB News's paper review & presenter of the Daily Sceptic podcast, which grew out of a Lockdown Sceptics website founded by Toby Young.

Online, Dixon praises unvaccinated people, calling them "pure bloods".
It's not only the pandemic where those given voice & prominence by GB "News" veer towards the unhinged.

Calvin Robinson, who dresses in an old-fashioned clergy uniform despite the CofE having declined to ordain him, shared an unfounded theory about Ukraine war.
Robinson makes the unfounded claim that Ukraine war money is actually a money-laundering operation for US aid to be donated to the Democratic party via the use of cryptocurrency.
And during recent immigration debates, Calvin Robinson, who is black, repeatedly praised the views of Enoch "Rivers of Blood" Powell, tweeting that "Powell provided an important contribution to the conversation" and changing his background image to a picture of the politician.
Indeed, Robinson - now a regular on Fox "News" where he self-identifies as "Anglican Deacon", "Father" Calvin Robinson - is quite happy to use his @Twitter account as an unpleasant extension of his GB "News" role.

He's also 'Strategy Adviser' to Lawrence Fox's Reclaim Party.
On a recent episode of his Sunday GB "News" programme Common Sense Crusade, Michael Coren, a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, defended "buffer zones" around abortion clinics to stop anti-abortion activists upsetting people using the services.

newstatesman.com/quickfire/2022…
Coren was promised by producers there would be "civility & friendly disagreement" both on & off air.
However, entirely predictably, host Calvin Robinson took to Twitter to accuse Coren of "twisting scripture" and being "pro- abortion and anti-prayer".
Calvin Robinson told his followers that what Coren had said was "wicked... Judgement awaits". Coren predictably received a slew of what he described as "angry, venomous and abusive" messages as a result.

Robinson also a senior fellow at Policy Exchange.

On-air #misinformation from GB "News" is also
having real world influence.

A recent spate of reports falsely representing that a traffic-calming measure in Oxfordshire was a "climate lockdown" went viral and resulted in abuse & death threats being directed at council staff.
Broadcast regulator @Ofcom does regulate a little: there are two active investigations against GB "News", both against Steyn.

Last spring he wrongly said that having additional Covid vaccines was killing people & slammed a "media silence" on the issue.

pressgazette.co.uk/news/ofcom-gb-…
In October Steyn's guest, the seldom accurate Naomi Wolf, claimed women were being harmed by Covid vaccines.

But @Ofcom is complaints-based, & as most viewers in the GB "News" echo chamber are unlikely to complain, much of its output goes unmonitored.

Even when we do complain to @Ofcom about GB "News", it rarely seems to have any effect.

However, the more of us complain, the more likely they are to stop shamelessly normalising far-right speakers, far-right conspiracy theories, & far-right rhetoric. 🙏

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More from @docrussjackson

GET A GRIP Profile picture
Nov 21
🧵

In May, Reform UK became the UK’s first party to accept crypto donations; experts warned of major money-laundering and foreign interference risks.

The NCA says Tether—backed by Reform’s £13.7M donor Christopher Harborne—has been used by Russia to fund its war in Ukraine. Image
A multibillion-dollar scheme that exchanges cash from drug and gun sales in the UK for crypto—digital tokens hiding users’ identities—has enabling “sanctions evasions and the highest levels of organised crime, including providing money-laundering services to the Russian state”.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
In 2023, the hedge fund co-founded by GB "News" owner Paul Marshall, who employs 60% of anti-Net Zero Reform UK's MPs, had £1.8 BILLION invested in fossil fuel firms.

Harborne (who has Thai citizenship under the name 'Chakrit Sakunkrit) also makes money from fossil fuels.

Read 17 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Nov 19
🧵

I and countless others are sick to death of the billionaire-funded Reform UK propaganda machine, GB “News”, and their decontextualised ‘facts’ that would make Goebbels blush.

Let’s examine the claim that “one quarter of foreign sex offenders come from just five countries”.
Yes, the raw data comes from a genuine Ministry of Justice (MoJ) prison census, but the way it’s being weaponised is deeply misleading.

The statistic sounds explosive, and deliberately so: a factoid engineered to sound like a revelation of hidden danger.
The right-wing information pipeline: a cherry-picked fragment of official data stripped of context, laundered through an opaquely funded “think tank” that isn't a think tank, amplified by billionaire-funded media, and weaponised by opportunistic politicians for electoral gain.
Read 38 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Nov 19
🧵

Reform UK’s head of Policy is a privately educated son of immigrants called Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf.

Yusuf is a shameless liar.

Below, I'll expose just a few of his more recent brazen lies and misleading claims about asylum seekers, immigrants, and ‘foreign nationals’.
In the September 2025 @SkyNews Immigration Debate, chaired by Trevor “Muslims are not like us” Phillips, Reform UK’s head of policy Zia Yusuf made a series of inaccurate and highly misleading claims about migration, and more recently, on @BBCNewsnight, about social housing. Image
These assertions are easily disproved with publicly available data, but often go largely unchallenged on air, despite being about some of the most sensitive and polarised issues in politics.

Yusuf started by claiming that UK net migration “last year” was “about a million.” Image
Read 39 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Nov 11
🧵 OPEN LETTER

Defend the @BBC Before It’s Gone

The BBC isn’t perfect — but it’s ours. As coordinated attacks on its independence intensify, I warn that if we don’t defend it now, we may lose more than a broadcaster — we may lose a cornerstone of British democracy... Image
As a long-time critic of the @BBC, let me spell it out: what we’re seeing right now isn’t organic outrage — it’s a sophisticated coordinated campaign by ideological enemies and commercial competitors to undermine the BBC’s independence and funding. Image
If you can’t see that, you’re being played — and that’s exactly the point.

Let’s start with Michael Prescott, author of the dodgy dossier leaked exclusively to The Telegraph, who is a PR man and former political editor at Murdoch’s Sunday Times.

news.sky.com/story/who-is-m…
Read 40 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Nov 2
🧵

Shameless Matt Goodwin’s post is a cascade of fearmongering, distortion, and pseudo-intellectual racism.

It takes a handful of horrific individual crimes and turns them into a sweeping indictment of entire communities.

It's pure scapegoating, dressed up as social science.
1. Misrepresenting facts.

Many of the crimes Goodwin cites are still under investigation, misreported, or involve UK citizens, not “illegal migrants.” The Huntingdon suspect is British-born — yet he cites it as evidence of “mass uncontrolled immigration.”
Image
There is no factual link between the Huntingdon attack and migration.

In fact, once you control for age and sex, non-UK nationals are slightly LESS likely to be in prison than UK citizens — and for violence and robbery, non-citizens are under-represented.
migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/comm…
Read 17 tweets
GET A GRIP Profile picture
Nov 2
🧵

Shameless opportunist Rupert Lowe is the most dangerous and most extreme MP in the UK.

His latest stunt is a letter to the PM that strongly implies the knife attack on a train was the product of “mass immigration” and “Islamic extremism”. It had *nothing* to do with either.
The incident was reported as NOT terror-related and the suspects BRITISH BORN at around 8:30 am: by @BBCNews 8:32; @Guardian 8:34; @SkyNews 8:36;
@ITVNews 8:38.

Lowe published his letter strongly implying it was 'Islamic extremists' on @X at 08:41. It quickly gathered 1M views. Image
Lowe is a modern day Oswald Mosley, shamelessly normalizating far-right discourse.

His letter is political malpractice: it mixes fear, plausible deniability, and ineffective proposals that would shred civil liberties and wreck lives, all while offering zero credible evidence. Image
Read 32 tweets

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