Mark Steyn Takes Ofcom to Court Saying Regulator Killed His Career Over Covid Vaccine Claims
Mark Steyn, the former GB News presenter, has taken Ofcom to court accusing it of “killing his career” after he questioned Covid vaccines on air, with the regulator saying his programmes caused “harm to viewers”. The Telegraph has more.
The presenter left GB News after the media regulator found two of his programmes, which featured discussions about the vaccine rollout, breached its guidelines.
Mr Steyn, 64, has asked a High Court judge to quash the decisions, claiming they had a “chilling effect”.
Speaking in court for Mr Steyn on June 10th, his lawyer Jonathan Price said: “The rulings against his show have killed his career, killed his career in the U.K. and given rise to what he describes as crude defamation… recycled through the London papers as if they had the force of criminal convictions.”
Canadian presenter Mr. Steyn joined GB News in 2021 but left in 2023, claiming that it wanted him to pay fines to Ofcom after the rulings against him.
Ofcom had found that on April 21st 2022 statistics from the U.K. Health Security Agency were presented in a “materially misleading way” in a broadcast which received four complaints.
It ruled that the show incorrectly “provided definitive evidence of a causal link between receiving a third COVID-19 vaccine and higher infection, hospitalisation and death rates”.
The presentation was made without sufficient counterweight and was found to be a potential “harm to viewers”.
Ofcom also took issue with a broadcast on Oct 4th 2022, when Mr. Steyn interviewed U.S. author Naomi Wolf during a show which received more than 400 complaints from viewers.
Ms. Wolf claimed that the vaccine rollout was akin to “mass murder”, and comparable to the actions of “doctors in pre-Nazi Germany”.
Ofcom ruled this amounted to “an unchallenged conspiracy theory”, and Ms. Wolf’s unopposed claims were a “harm to viewers”.
Worth reading in full.
Kathy Gyngell has written a fulsome defence of Steyn over on TCW Defending Freedom, calling him “the finest, the most talented and acute of journalists and broadcasters to have graced our TV screens in recent years”. On Covid vaccine harms he was the “only broadcaster doing his job”.
Vindication if anymore were needed came just weeks after the ruling. Evidence after evidence has since continued to emerge of Covid vaccines’ harms. Senior figures have joined Professor Dalgleish’s call for all mRNA vaccines to be banned, such are the risks. The ONS has been found to have lied about its vaccines safety and efficacy claims.
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It would be poetic justice for Mark to be successful in court, the reality of the Covid “vaccine” débâcle is becoming clearer with every passing week and the guilty establishment, including Ofcom, need a steel-toecapped punt in the rear end.
Lovely. 👍
I agree 100% with Kathy Gyngell’s assessment of Mark Steyn as a journalist. In my opinion he stands head and shoulders above any other journalist on the planet. He is a division above whoever is deemed next best.
Ofcom is clearly nothing more than a government manipulated inquisition board which is allowed full reign to prosecute as it pleases and law be damned. Another wholly unnecessary addition to the grifter payroll.
Given the fact that GB News effectively hung Mark Steyn out to dry I would hope that if his case is successful they would at least have the decency to pay substantial damages. Ditto Ofcom.
Chances of success?
This will be down to Fishy’s Davos handlers. By allowing Ofcom to uphold the original decision another nail would be driven in to the Conservative Party coffin so this result would be favourite. However, finding in
Mark Steyn’s favour might act as a low-cost, palliative sop designed to give the appearance of “justice” in our courts’ system.
By nature I am not an optimist so I will go with option one.
Notwithstanding my gloom – good luck Mark.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/see-you-in-court-mark-steyn-bites-back-at-ofcom/
Kathy Gyngell’s article.
He was one of the journalists who made GBN a worthwhile channel to watch.
Exactly.
I now occasionally watch an odd snippet on YouTube but that’s all.
Neil Oliver is good.
“palliative sop designed to give the appearance of “justice” in our courts’ system”
A bit like the limited hangout regarding Hunter Biden Court case. All focus on his buying a gun and nothing about his dealings with Ukraine and “pay the big guy”, who could he possibly mean!
Just keep in mind the outcome of Mark’s New York defamation case against Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann. Clearly mark was right, but the court was politicised, so couldn’t allow him to win.
Only the State wins in NY
Does anyone else have the feeling of waking up to the realisation that we live in a quasi soviet system where official lies are ok and unofficial truths get you into trouble?
Every journalist and TV programme that said that covid jabs stopped you getting infected and were safe should be banned, by the standard of misleading the public and causing harm.
And yet it’s the opposite.
If only this sort of madness were an isolated incident one could dismiss it as part of the imperfections of any system. But our entire system is like this. It’s all bullshit. It’s all lies. It’s the way a totalitarian state stays in control.
I find it astonishing and crushingly depressing that people are not outraged that OFCOM exists at all, at least in its role as a content moderator. But most people I have spoken to are quite in favour of “misinformation” and “disinformation” being identified and censored, and think that more or less unfettered free speech is a terrible idea – they want to believe in “trusted” sources of information because it makes life easier, stops them having to think, and it makes the world seem like a safer, less scary place. It’s a nice idea but the penny finally dropped for me with “covid” that it’s a completely unrealistic idea. But I think most people still think like this – the idea of a free market for information where caveat emptor applies seems alien to them.
Straight from the OFCOM’s mouth (quoted by TCW):
We’ve been consistently clear that broadcasters are free to air potentially controversial and challenging programmes or question government/official stats & evidence. However, with this comes an obligation to ensure audiences are not materially misled on factual matters.
So, OFCOM is not only the final and infallible arbiter of all human differences of opinion about what does or doesn’t constitute factual matters in all areas of human knownledge but additionally, also the final and infallible arbiter of all conceivable conclusions humans could draw from any factual matters? Can’t wait for them to rename themselves OFGOD and demand that mere mortals erect shrines in their honour to worship them there!
That’s obviously sarcasm. If the above wasn’t true, it would make a splendig satirical take on the hybris of government official rivalling Dicken’s Circumlocution Office.
Lol, I’d not heard of Dicken’s Circumlocution Office – shows my ignorance!
And as Steyn mentioned in his latest blog, surely these celebs pushing the jab and taking a bunce is surely illegal.
According to an article of yesterday, Christian Drosten publically claimed that people not vaccinated against COVID would cause those who were vaccinated to get sick with COVID on the 25th of June 2022. I think that answers the question.
Whilst I of course support Mr Steyn 100%, the system defends itself and I consider his changes of success slim to none. Best case scenario the court find Ofcom guilty on some minor technical point.
This isn’t like the US where you can jurisdiction shop and find a court with an ideologically aligned judge.
How is Mr Bridgen’s defamation suit going by the way?
Relating to Handicock I presume?
He won, sort of, but lost. The judge ordered him to pay Handicock’s costs.
British justice eh?
I have not heard anything about that, but I just have analogue radio in the car and get an overdose of BBC bs.
Handicock’s costs were just shy of £90k
https://www.itv.com/news/central/2024-03-29/andrew-bridgen-told-to-pay-matt-hancock-legal-fees-of-40000-in-libel-claim
This was only the first part.
Bridgen went on to win but was then ordered to pay more costs.
Obviously the judge wasn’t bent or anything like that…Well presumably…no surely not….on the take? Ooh, I couldn’t possibly comment.
He lost his Hockey Stick case in America against Michael Mann even though Mark was 100% correct.
This case could cost him his life due to his ill health.
Historically Britain’s economic strength was built on a fair an honest judicial system. Sadly, those day were long gone. The final nail in the coffin was hammered in by Tony Blair.
Tony Bliar? Not The Tony Bliar.
The most evil man ever to hold a British passport.
That’s the one, the psychopathic, non-empathetic, grinning, mad-eyed, bouffant-haired bastard.
Eloquent. Delightfully Eloquent. 😀😀👍
Steyn knows that this will be difficult to present a case for the defense of covid vaccines. The excess death data from the ONS, WHO, Global Burden of Disease, the study from the Netherlands are of huge concern. Their only defense strategy will be to kick this case down the road or to pay him off.
“ were presented in a “materially misleading way”….Just what happens every time I turn on the radio and have “climate crisis” and “hottest May on record”. but the OFF -Communists are not interested in that.
A hero to whom I am grateful.
May he succeed, big time.
The headline in the Telegraph said “Former GB News Presenter….”
Pretty disgraceful considering he was once a Daily Telegraph columnist.
https://www.steynonline.com/
The ‘system’ is definitely out to get Mark Steyn. OFCOM’s first action, besides their peddling of wrong information on the jab efficacy and safety, was launched on the basis of FOUR complaints it received about the broadcast.
The Mann vs Steyn action (remember him, the discredited ‘hockey stick’ dude?) resulted in Mann winning $1 in compensation for the ‘damage’ his reputation suffered. (In reality, Mark Steyn shone a light on Mann’s shady work). Punitive awards, designed to teach the ‘guilty party’ a lesson are usually in the realm of a 1 to 4 or 1 to 8 ratio. Not so for Mark Steyn. He was hit for $1,000,000 in punitive damages.
As the old aphorism goes, ‘Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’
Bilbo Baggins once said to Frodo something like “It’s a dangerous thing to walk beyond your garden path Bilbo, you never know where it will take you”. Today it is “It’s a dangerous thing to tell the truth, you know where that will take you”. How about banning politicians who claim / claimed that Death Jabs protect you? Not one manufacturer, out of the initial 14, ever said that. They all said their aim was to “mitigate symptoms”. In the space of three days, a Monday and a Wednesday, Johnson and Javid both said, on live TV, that the jabs give you “immunity from Covid”. That is a blatant lie and contradicts what any manufacturer ever claimed. Where was OfCom then? In non-debate after non-debate on the BBC we hear talking twonks rabbiting nonsense about Climate Change. The BBC doesn’t even bother with an opposing view. Where is OfCom every day of the week on this blatant abuse of the rules? The Met tells lies every day and even admits it falsifies the figures. Where are OfCom? We live in a world far, far beyond anything the Communists could have dreamt up. The Socialists, who were, of course, the world… Read more »
Indeed
Fauci: Vaccinated people become ‘dead ends’ for the coronavirus (thehill.com)
Incidentally, why doesn’t Chris Packham, the only person in the UK who lies more than Fear Starmer, get pulled up by OfCom? He daily spouts lies and is never contradicted, there is never any counter argument.
Preventing free speech is the means to prevent people being free to hear from a variety of sources, and weigh these against the official narrative.
Censorship proves the official narrative is on shaky ground and lacks supporting evidence, and is used to cover up lies.
Will children continue to be allowed to read? It all seems rather Dark Ages Medieval to me where a few controlled the many and the facts were closely guarded.
I doubt Steyn will be allowed to win. If he does it creates too many other problems. But I have everything crossed for him.
Office of Communism should have been shut down by the tories long ago.
We need a government that has policies to close down all quangos and return the functions back to parliamentary scrutiny and control.
All of Trotsky Bliar’s laws should be undone. Never mind tinkering with small beer economic matters, the big constitutional stuff needs remedying.
“was found to be a potential harm to viewers”!? Are we now in the ‘Minority Report’ age?