A former GB News presenter who lost a high court battle with Ofcom has been ordered to pay £50,000 in legal costs before the final bill is determined.
Mark Steyn claimed the regulator had “killed” his career with rulings about Covid content on two of his 2022 shows, but in July Mrs Justice Farbey dismissed his legal challenge.
In an episode in April 2022, Steyn gave a monologue on the rollout of Covid vaccines, based on UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data. Ofcom ruled in March last year that the show breached its rules as it gave a “materially misleading interpretation” of the figures, which risked “harm to viewers”.
A second show in October 2022 featured an interview with the author Naomi Wolf, which the watchdog said included her likening the vaccine rollout to a “mass murder” comparable to the actions of “doctors in pre-Nazi Germany”.
The regulator ruled in May last year that GB News failed to take “adequate steps to protect viewers” from “potentially harmful content”, labelling Wolf’s comments as promoting a “serious conspiracy theory”.
In her July ruling, Farbey rejected Steyn’s challenge to Ofcom’s decisions, stating that the regulator was “entitled to conclude” that the shows breached its rules and that its reasons for its decisions were “detailed and comprehensive”.
She agreed with barristers for the regulator who had argued that there was no “realistic basis” to claim it had “obviously gone wrong” in its reasoning. On Tuesday, Farbey ordered that Steyn pay £50,000 to Ofcom by 19 November, with remaining costs subject to a “detailed assessment” at a later date.
However, she said it was “unsatisfactory” that the two sides had failed to reach an agreement on costs, and that “doubtless had wiser heads prevailed” the matter would already have been agreed.
Steyn, who presented the 8pm peak-time slot on GB News, quit the channel in February last year after it tried to make him personally responsible for paying any fines issued by Ofcom. He now lives in the US.
