Well, that didn’t take long. We’re not even 48 hours into the latest Twitterstorm about upstart anti-woke news channel GB News – this time sparked by presenter Laurence Fox’s sexist, on-air comments about journalist Ava Evans – and it’s already become abundantly clear that all the outrage and fury isn’t really about those comments at all.

On the BBC’s Newsnight programme last night, veteran journalist and broadcaster Adam Boulton had this to say: ‘I think there is a delicate and important broadcast ecology in this country. I think GB News is trying to bust that ecology, and frankly what Ofcom should do is shut it down’.

Tory MP Caroline Nokes, who has never seen a bandwagon she hasn’t wanted to jump on, concurred.

‘Actually, I agree with Adam: it should be taken off air’, she added, to the surprise of no one. ‘I think Ofcom deserves a bit of time and space for it to do its job, and if we as parliament aren’t happy with the regulations that are set, then maybe we should be tightening them up.’

“I think it should be taken off air”

Conservative MP Caroline Nokes tells #Newsnight Ofcom needs space to its job and that maybe regulations should be ‘tightened up’https://t.co/P0zxS1DNGF pic.twitter.com/RizHEY89vt

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) September 27, 2023

The message couldn’t be clearer. GB News is a problem not because one of its presenters said something disgusting – for those who have been living under a rock, Fox caricatured Evans as a miserable feminist no man would want to have sex with – but because it disrupts the ‘broadcast ecology’, because it threatens the established channels and ways of doing things.

We really shouldn’t be surprised. Centrist sensibles and woke authoritarians have been calling for GB News to be shut down since before it went live. Barely a few hours into its launch, the censorious Stop Funding Hate campaign managed to harangue a string of big sponsors into pulling their advertising. The boycott haunts GBN’s finances to this day.

No one is condoning what Fox said

To be clear, no one is condoning what Fox said. Least of all GB News. It has suspended and is investigating him and fellow presenter Dan Wootton, on whose show Fox had his gross little outburst. Pretty much the entire GB presenter and pundit roster has publicly criticised Fox’s comments. Last night, Wootton’s temporary fill-in, Mark Dolan, devoted his monologue to doing so.

GB News viewers are not tuning in every night to watch (possibly inebriated) pundits make degrading comments about women. They are tuning in for the kind of common-sense, anti-woke views that are woefully absent in the mainstream. The vast majority of the schedule is made up of pretty gentle current-affairs programmes, albeit ones in which the presenters are free to openly express their opinions.

Sure, there are a few presenters (Fox included) who have gone off the crankish, conspiratorial deep end. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to watch them. The journalists and activists moaning about these people being ‘platformed’ should either switch off the TV and get on with their lives or volunteer to appear on these shows and debate them. It really isn’t that difficult.

Those who decry GB News’s lack of impartiality – or rather its opinionated format, in which presenters do not pretend to be unbiased and guests are relied upon to provide political balance – must not have been watching Sky News or BBC News or Channel 4 News in recent years. Remember Emily Maitlis’ tirade against Dominic Cummings? Or Jon Snow’s bizarre ‘I’ve never seen so many white people’ comment at a pro-Brexit rally? At least GB News is upfront about where it’s coming from.

Similarly, to those sincerely suggesting that lewd, unpleasant comments have simply never been broadcast by another outlet, I have two words: remember Sachsgate? I don’t recall liberal-left commentators demanding the BBC be shut down after Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s antics.

For those who say it is now just about Ofcom ‘doing its job’ and enforcing its rules without fear or favour, Nokes’ comments on Newsnight rather gave the game away; she said that if MPs are unhappy with the Ofcom verdict handed down on GBN, they can always ‘tighten up’ the regulations.

So there we have it. Establishment broadcasters and members of parliament calling on the regulators to shut down a TV station they disapprove of – all over conduct that a presenter is already being punished for. If you really think this latest Two Minutes Hate against GB News is just about Laurence Fox and his grim little outburst, I have a mothballed TV studio to sell you.