The UK’s TV and radio regulator is allowing GB News and others to “flout” accuracy rules and broadcast climate change denial, say campaigners. Instances cited include describing global heating as “the climate scam” and suggesting the government was going to introduce “enforced veganism”.
Ofcom has received 1,221 complaints related to the climate crisis since January 2020, when its searchable database began. None resulted in a ruling that the broadcasting code had been breached. In fact, only two such breaches have been found since 2007.
More than 50 of the complaints were made by the campaign group Reliable Media about GB News programmes since March 2024. The group said the segments included false statements about climate breakdown that had either gone unchallenged or had failed to be balanced. Ofcom assessed but did not pursue any of the complaints. The campaigners accused Ofcom of “effectively suspending its accuracy rules on this life-and-death issue”.
In contrast, the French regulator Arcom has found four broadcasting code breaches related to the climate crisis in the last two years. In one, the rightwing channel CNews was fined €20,000 (£17,000) for a segment in which a speaker said climate change was “a lie, a scam”.
GB News said the campaigners were politically motivated and wanted to shut down public debate.
The Guardian reviewed a sample of 18 of the complaints made by Reliable Media. They included the GB News host Ben Leo describing global heating as “the climate scam” in April 2025 and a guest on a September 2024 show hosted by the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, criticising those “who say ‘Oh global warming, global warming, global warming’ as though this were a problem. You just go outside tonight, you’ll see it isn’t really”. In November 2024, the GB News host Leo Kearse misleadingly suggested that the UK government was going to introduce “enforced veganism”.
A regular contributor to the Headliners show, Lewis Schaffer, claimed in July 2024 that “climate change is rubbish” and that “climate is the full-on war” as opposed to a “culture war”. A few weeks earlier Schaffer claimed “the truth is climate change is not a real thing” and that “we’ve been lied to”.
Another guest said in June 2024 that “since 1979 we’ve been checking the change and comparing it with the forecast of the UN models … and it just doesn’t happen as advertised”. In fact, UN climate models have been remarkably accurate.
The burning of fossil fuels has “unequivocally caused global warming”, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC is a collaboration of thousands of leading scientists and its conclusions are signed off by its 195 member countries, including the UK. “Widespread losses and damages to nature and people” will continue to intensify, the IPCC said, and rapid cuts in carbon emissions to net zero are required: “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”
Ofcom’s broadcasting code requires that factual programmes “must not materially mislead the audience” and that “news, in whatever form, must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality”. The code further requires that “alternative viewpoints must be adequately represented” when programme presenters express their own views on matters of political controversy or public policy. Guidance notes for the code add that: “An example of an issue which Ofcom considered to be broadly settled is the scientific principles behind the theory of anthropogenic global warming.”
“Obviously we’re all free as individuals to hold whatever opinions we like,” said Richard Wilson, the director of Reliable Media. “But running a TV or radio station [means] you’re promising to uphold some pretty basic standards around truth and accuracy. The problem is that Ofcom is now allowing some TV and radio stations to flout the rules and on an issue like climate change the stakes could not be higher.”
Ofcom was “hiding behind a simplistic and distorted definition of freedom of expression”, he said, adding that Arcom’s approach in France showed it was possible for regulators to take robust action on climate misinformation.
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A spokesperson for Ofcom said: “We enforce our rules fairly and proportionately, acting independently and impartially at all times. In line with the right to freedom of expression, our rules allow for robust debate about topical issues, and broadcasters are free to include controversial opinions in their programmes, providing they comply with the code.”
In a response to a freedom of information request, Ofcom said “there have been no recent investigations” relating to climate change. It said the only investigations it held on record were from 2017 and 2007, in which BBC Radio 4 and Channel 4 respectively were judged to have breached the broadcasting code.
A GB News spokesperson said: “Like all these politically motivated activist groups the only thing that is ‘reliable’ is their desire to shut down public debate – even when a broadcaster is fully compliant with the rules. Unfortunately for them they are losing. GB News is fearless in its coverage of all perspectives including those which might challenge so-called consensus.”
Arcom has declared four breaches of its broadcasting code related to climate change since 2023. As well as fining CNews for the 2023 television segment in which a speaker said climate change was “a lie, a scam” and “a form of totalitarianism”, Sud Radio received warnings after programmes in which “several statements contradicted or minimised the existing scientific consensus on current climate change, in treatment lacking rigour and without contradiction”, which constituted “a failure by the company to fulfil its obligation of honesty”.
Arcom’s deputy director, Pauline Combredet-Blassel, said in April: “Since there is a scientific consensus on climate change, we verify whether it is referenced in the disputed segment, and we only intervene if it is not.”
Eva Morel, at QuotaClimat, the French campaign group that filed the climate complaints to Arcom, said: “It is perfectly OK to have different opinions on climate change. What becomes problematic is when a society can no longer agree on facts, because facts are the foundation of trust, which in turn underpins law, and ultimately, democracy.”
She added: “When the media blur the line between facts and opinions, it doesn’t lead people to trust in alternative truths; it leads them to trust in nothing at all. Sowing doubt about climate science serves to obstruct climate action and it endangers lives.”
