Broadcaster Adam Boulton and UK MP Ms Caroline Nokes have recently called for GB News, a fledgling conservative TV station in the United Kingdom, to be “taken off air,” because of misogynistic comments made by one of their employees, Laurence Fox, about journalist Ava Evans.
The comments made by Mr Fox were indeed uncouth and disrespectful - the sorts of comments you might hear in a locker-room of men who speak about women in an objectifying and demeaning manner. The fact that Mr Fox made the comments in the context of an argument over male suicide does not in any way excuse them.
GB News acted swiftly to register its disapproval, issuing a public apology and suspending Laurence Fox as well as his interviewer, Dan Wootton - though to be fair, Dan Wootton’s main error in this debacle seems to have been not to have intervened quickly during the interview to make clear that such comments were unacceptable.
I will not dignify Mr Fox’s comments by repeating them here. But suffice to say that they sexually objectified Ava Evans in a way that was gratuitously crude and disrespectful. But this unfortunate incident has been exploited by people who should know better to attack a free and diverse media.
That a broadcaster (Adam Boulton) and a member of parliament (Caroline Nokes) would use an isolated incident of this sort as a pretext for calling for the elimination of an entire media organisation shows that they have no conception of the role of a diverse media in a free society. We can only hope that their comments are not representative of establishment opinion more broadly.
Ms Noke’s and Mr Boulton’s remarks are ill-considered, dangerous and insidious. If we’d seen a similar incident on BBC, would they be calling for BBC to be "taken off air"? I very much doubt it. GB News is seen as a soft target because it espouses views that are unsupported by many mainstream politicians and journalists.
Calls for GB News to be “taken off air” are an utterly disproportionate and reckless response to an incident of this sort. Anyone who attacks GB News's right to exist as a media organisation just because someone said something unacceptable on air, is attacking the very infrastructure of a free society.
We need journalists and media outlets willing to stand up against the conventional wisdom of the political and media establishment if we are to have genuine political debate on our airwaves, rather than media pundits clapping each other on the back for sharing the same cosy opinions. People are right to come down hard on Laurence Fox for his disrespectful comments. But they are completely out of line when they use this unfortunate incident as a pretext for attacking media freedom.
If you have not done so already, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support my work in defence of freedom.
Paying subscribers get access to subscriber-exclusive content such as the following:
The Inherently Expansive Quality of Sovereign Power, and How to Resist It
How Meaningful is My Work? Answer these Fifteen Questions to Find Out
GB News is a fantastic channel, and unlike legacy media, every debate presents both sides. They have secured top notch interviews with minister, the Prime Minister and others....no way should they be cancelled. Legacy media is running scared because the channel regularly pulls in more viewers than BBC and Sky News combined!
I think who they want to take down is Neil Oliver, and Fox is just an excuse to create plausible deniability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne0KV_8NgXg