UK: Regulator finds Fox News in breach of impartiality rules

The British media regulator Ofcom has found that two Fox News shows from earlier this year, “The Sean Hannity Show” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” breached the nation’s impartiality rules.

In updates issued Monday, November 6, according to Variety, Ofcom said that the broadcasts violated British broadcasting requirements for “due impartiality.”

The agency issued its findings after a single complaint was filed in each case even though Fox News is no longer on the air in the UK.

In August, 21st Century Fox pulled the plug on the US-based news network in the UK. as Ofcom continued to evaluate the company’s US$15 billion proposal to acquire the remaining stake in Sky TV that the Murdoch-run company does not already own.

Ofcom noted that “Fox News is a US news channel, directed at US audiences” and that “people who watch it in the UK are aware that it is a US channel and their expectations are different.”

Nonetheless, the agency found that a January 31 episode of Hannity’s show involving President Donald Trump’s proposed travel ban failed to provide “adequate representation of alternative views in ‘personal view’ or discussion programmes” and to offer “appropriately wide range of significant views” on the issue.