GB News, which has drawn comparisons with US television network Fox News for its unabashed right-wing populist agenda, on Wednesday, October 4, said it had sacked two presenters for sexism on air.
Actor-turned-"anti-woke" activist Laurence Fox was suspended after a string of personal attacks on a female journalist on a show presented by journalist Dan Wootton last week. At one point, Fox, 45, asked: "Who would want to shag that?"
In the furor that followed, fellow presenter Calvin Robinson, an evangelical preacher and conservative commentator, voiced his support online for Wootton. Fox and Wootton later apologized but GB News said it had now "ended its employment relationship" with both after an internal investigation.
A company probe into Wootton, who allegedly ignored calls to challenge Fox's remarks, is ongoing, it added. Fox has presented a weekly show on the channel, which launched in June 2021 billing itself as an independent competitor to more established broadcasters such as the BBC and Sky News.
It has made no secret of its desire to appeal to Brexit voters who backed the UK's departure from the European Union, claiming their views were ignored by mainstream channels. Brexit champion and arch-eurosceptic populist Nigel Farage is one of its star presenters.
On Monday, former interior minister Priti Patel called the channel "defenders of free speech" and criticized the BBC as "Brexit-bashing, free-speech deniers." But the channel has run into repeated controversy, not least over its employment of several prominent members of the ruling Conservative party as presenters, and claims it has repeatedly breached the broadcasting code of neutrality for TV news outlets.
Fox – a prominent anti-Covid vaccine campaigner who stood unsuccessfully for election as an MP in former prime minister Boris Johnson's former constituency earlier this year and the London mayoralty in 2021 – had his own weekly show on GB News.
UK media watchdog Ofcom said on Wednesday it had received nearly 8,500 complaints about his remarks.