GB News is facing a second investigation by media regulator Ofcom over its coverage of the coronavirus vaccine.
The latest investigation relates to an interview with writer Naomi Wolf in which she claimed that women are being harmed by Covid-19 vaccines as part of an attempt to “destroy British civil society”.
Ofcom said it would investigate whether the show violated “rules designed to protect viewers from harmful material” after receiving more than 400 complaints from members of the public.
In the interview, which was originally broadcast on October 4, Wolf also compared doctors’ support for a vaccine rollout to the conduct of the medical profession in Nazi Germany and described herself as “the last remaining independent journalist” willing to question the matter.
She was interviewed on the Mark Steyn Show, who has repeatedly questioned the safety of vaccines. Steyn’s claims that punches cause “every kind of conceivable harm” have been challenged by fact-checking sites. And it’s already the subject of a separate Ofcom investigation into previous comments about vaccination.
Woolf began as a prominent feminist writer, but in recent years her career has taken a major blow after she wrote a book based in part on a misunderstanding of English court records. Since then, I’ve drifted into the realm of conspiracy theories about the impact of 5G phone antennas and the coronavirus vaccine.
Since then, presenter Matthew Sweet, whose BBC interview revealed the flaw in Wolff’s book, has been monitoring her work and GB News’ coverage of the pandemic and accused the channel of “spreading misinformation about vaccines and presenting conspiracy theorists as legitimate experts on medical matters”.
In a letter to Sweet on Twitter last month, GB News insisted that at no point had Stein’s show adopted an “anti-extremist” approach. Instead, she said, he was conducting investigative reporting against people who wanted GB News to be “more supportive of government policy.”
Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin
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