We have given people like my mum a voice
AT 8pm on Sunday, one week ago, GB News launched. As the minutes ticked down I was one of more than a dozen presenters nervously waiting to be introduced to our fledgling audience by the face of our news channel,andrew Neil.
We gathered in a room just off the studio set. Some of us were veterans of TV, others practically novices.
There was a sense of history but also trepidation. Many of us had put our careers on the line and lives on hold to be here.
Would the technology work?
How many viewers would watch? What would we hear from the online activists who’d dubbed our media start-up brand “anti-woke”?
How did we get on? I’ll come to that in a moment.
But let’s start with that Sunday evening. It was a significant punctuation mark in our national story and the culture wars that seem to be invading every walk of life.
A £60million budget, new jobs created for more than 120 journalists and, after months of careful planning, there we all were.
I looked across the Green R oom at some familiar faces: Simon Mccoy from the BBC, Alastair Stewart from ITV, Gloria de Piero, the former Labour MP.
My co-presenter, the brilliant 25-year-old Mercy Muroki, felt physically sick with anxiety and I wasn’t feeling much better.
The clock counted down and then Andrew began his own Declaration of (Journalistic) Independence. It was from the heart.
We were answering a call to unmuffle voices in Britain which felt cowed or overlooked.
We would not be a British version of Fox News. But we were going to do things differently. At the end of
Britain’s newest TV channel GB News has been up and running for a week – and it’s been a lively one. Here, presenter COLIN BRAZIER gives his verdict on how it went and how he thinks it means that many viewers, just like his mother, feel happy to turn on TV news again
his soliloquy, our roomful of presenters – indeed the whole newsroom – erupted in spontaneous applause.
There were tears and hugs.
But no time for a toast. It was our turn to shine. In ones and twos we joined Andrew in the studio.
“Colin,” he said in that glorious Paisley drawl, “you seem to be much more outspoken these days.” He was right.
Since leaving Sky News, my employer of 24 years, I have learned to speak my mind. I told Andrew, and the 300,000 people watching, that for that I had my sister Annie to thank.
She and I grew up in Bradford. I left. She stayed, working from 16 years of age in the same textile mill (now long closed) that employed my mother and grandmother.
Over the years Annie’s views never changed – open-minded, never bigoted, takes as she finds, willing to give a fair hearing in good faith. But, like many Britons, she’d found that her worldview was no longer considered valid.
Her misgivings about modern life were dismissed as reactionary. Andrew, I said, I didn’t believe she was anything other than a loving sister to me and devoted mother to her three daughters.
It was for her, and millions of voiceless Britons like her, that I’d felt compelled to surrender a nice work/life balance and a secure salary at Sky.this was a gamble.
I’d become a widower a couple of years ago, and my six children needed all the parenting I could give them.
But GB News wasn’t just another job. It was – and is – a calling. A kind of vocation. Of course, it’s one thing to believe but another to deliver, and that’s not been without its challenges.
Online, many viewers loved the stories we were covering but were less convinced about some of the channel’s technical shortcomings.
The studio was too dark, said many.the sound not ideal either.
Within a day or two our engineers were beginning to put things right.
But then came a problem from an unexpected quarter. Swedish cider maker Kopparberg announced it was pulling its advertising on GB News following complaints from activists prompted by a small band of campaigners who style themselves Stop Funding Hate.
This organisation had been urging companies not to hand over cash to us for months – long before we’d broadcast a second of television.
Its claims were, and remain, ludicrous. GB News is not a haven for right-wing nutcases.
But that didn’t stop a domino effect that surprised people who hadn’t noticed how “right-on” many of our big corporations have become. Other firms followed suit.
Ikea said it was suspending its adverts, claiming the channel was not aligned with its “humanistic values”. What priggish self-serving hogwash.
A day or two, and quite a few emails from disgruntled customers later, and Ikea announced that, following a review, it accepted its decision to ditch us had been hasty.
And my week? Busy. Interviews with former Chancellor Sajid Javid, about his bill to raise the age of child marriage in a bid to avoid the exploitation of young Pakistaniheritage girls in particular.
Liz Truss on our new trade deal with Australia, Tony Abbott, former Australian PM, on how to stop illegal migrants crossing the English Channel, former England footballer John Barnes about taking the knee.
We also wanted to know why a council had taken down the Union Jack on Tyneside. Not a story I imagine the BBC would embrace.
As the channel’s first week on air came to a close, I had a text from my mother from her home in North Yorkshire: “I’ve finally been able to watch the news again.” I hope and believe she speaks for many.
‘GB News wasn’t just another job... it
was a calling’