GB News is an attempt at bringing Fox News-style biased news to the UK. The news channel has "anti-woke" political positions, and a range of right wing, pro-government, pro-Brexit and coronavirus-conspiracist presenters. Many are even former Brexit Party politicians – none of this is normal for a "news channel".
Andrew Neil
While better known for his BBC appearances, Andrew Neil has long been the publisher of right-wing magazine the Spectator. He is a frequent critic of "woke" politics, even naming a regular segment "Wokewatch" in his flagship GB News evening show. Neil says the channel is "proud to be British" but he lives in the south of France.
Alexandra Phillips
Phillips is a former Brexit Party MEP (2019-2020), and before that was head of media at UKIP. She worked for SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, on a 2017 election campaign in Kenya which saw fake news spread across the country.
Tom Harwood
Tom Harwood is a former staffer for far-right blog Guido Fawkes, which attacks progressives under the guise of being a journalistic outlet. He was the chair of pro-Brexit campaign group Students for Britain and a Tory local council candidate in 2018.
Andrew Doyle
A "comedian" and writer for Spiked Online, Doyle created the character Titania McGrath to mock "woke culture" and wrote a parody book Woke: A Guide to Social Justice under that name.
Michelle Dewberry
Dewberry was a vocal Brexit supporter and is a former Brexit Party general election candidate (2019).
Inaya Folarin Iman
Another former Brexit Party candidate and writer for Spiked Online, Iman is a critic of “woke” thinking who called the Black Lives Matter protests an “opportunistic pretext for an outpouring of self-righteous rage”.
Dan Wootton
Former Sun columnist and TalkRadio presenter Dan Wootton used his first broadcast on GB News to peddle coronavirus conspiracies, saying there is an attempt to turn Britain into "ultra-cautious biosecurity state, copying the likes of China", and railing against “doomsday scientists” who were “addicted to the power”, with the government running a Covid “scare campaign”. He has kept up this position in his shows since, and invited many "lockdown skeptics" on as guests.
Neil Oliver
Oliver is a "lockdown skeptic" who has called the coronavirus lockdown the "single biggest mistake in world history".
GB News' funders include:
GB News CEO Angelos Frangopoulos made his name running Sky News Australia - which, unlike the UK Sky News, runs "a steady diet of strident rightwing conservative opinion, more aligned with Fox News".
The channel's co-founders are Andrew Cole and Mark Schneider. Cole has called the BBC "possibly the most biased propaganda machine in the world". He says GB News will campaign against "MPs, members of the Lords and civil servants who acted against the UK and in favour of a foreign entity (the EU) during the Brexit years". Schneider is a member of Republicans Overseas, the group for supporters of Trump's party living outside the US. The two met through their shared idea for a British version of Fox News.