Right-wing UK TV channel fires two presenters in sexism row

LONDON (AFP): UK television channel GB News, which has drawn comparisons with US network Fox News for its unabashed right-wing populist agenda, on Wednesday said it had sacked two presenters after an on-air sexism row.

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 furore that followed, fellow presenter Calvin Robinson, an evangelical preacher and conservative commentator, voiced his support online for Wootton.

Fox and Wootton later apologised but GB News said it had now “ended its employment relationship” with Fox and Robinson 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, 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.

– ‘Cancel culture’ –

On Monday, former interior minister Priti Patel called the channel “defenders of free speech” and criticised the BBC as “Brexit-bashing, free-speech deniers”.

But Robinson reacted to his sacking, writing on X, formerly Twitter: “How long can a station keep calling itself ‘the home of free speech’ when it continues to engage in cancel culture?

“I supported my friends/colleagues and will continue to do so. That should not be a fireable offence. GB News is controlled opposition.”

Fox wrote on the same platform on Tuesday that he was guilty of “wrong speak” and “being rude whilst trying to make a joke”.

GB News 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 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.

Fox is from an acting dynasty. His uncle is “The Day of the Jackal” star Edward Fox.

New Zealander Wootton, 40, has since seen his columnist’s contract with right-wing news outlet MailOnline terminated.

With his former employer The Sun tabloid, he was sued unsuccessfully for libel by Hollywood actor Johnny Depp in 2020, and has separately faced allegations that he used a pseudonym and offered colleagues money for sexual images.

The claims, which Wootton on his TV show called a “smear campaign by nefarious players with an axe to grind”, were first reported by Byline Times.

The investigation by the independent news outlet was conducted by former colleagues of Wootton when he worked at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid.