British regulator: Fox News broke UK bias rules

A British media regulator found that Fox News programs broke the United Kingdom’s TV impartiality rules.

Media regulator Ofcom ruled that Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson’s shows on the network broke the impartiality rules for British broadcasting in coverage of the Manchester bombing and President Trump’s travel ban executive order in January, the Guardian reported.

Ofcom found that an episode of Carlson’s show in May violated rules regarding the representation of differing viewpoints and impartiality on issues that have to do with major political or industrial controversy following the Manchester terrorist attack, the Guardian reported.

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“Ofcom considered that viewers were likely to have expected the programme to comment critically on various political targets, which in this case included the UK government and UK authorities more generally,” the company said.

“However, we considered that these contextual factors were not sufficient to remove the need for the programme to also reflect significant alternative viewpoints, and treat these with due weight.”

The regulator found that Hannity’s show was in violation of similar rules in the show’s coverage of Trump’s travel ban in January.

It said the show had some clips of officials who were critical of Trump’s travel ban, but they were “repeatedly dismissed or ridiculed by the presenter without sufficient opportunity for the contributors to challenge or otherwise respond to the criticism directed at them.” 

The ruling comes after Fox pulled Fox News from its network in Britain due to a lack of audience.

Ofcom said it still made the ruling because it wanted “to ensure there is a complete compliance record and to facilitate public understanding of the code.”