GB News chief Andrew Neil hits out at brands severing ties with right-wing channel

New TV network facing advertising boycott days after first broadcast

Staff watch presenters Andrew Neil and Michelle Dewberry broadcast from a studio during the launch event for new TV channel GB News. AP

The chairman of a right-wing British news channel has responded fiercely to an advertising boycott only days after its opening broadcast.

The 24-hour GB News, which launched on Sunday, was boycotted by some of the world’s biggest brands after an online backlash from political activists.

Kopparberg, the Swedish cider company, was joined by Grolsch, Ikea, the Open University and skincare brand Nivea in removing advertising from the network.

Pinterest and Specsavers said they would review their advertising.

The move prompted a backlash from GB News chairman Andrew Neil, a former BBC journalist, who took particular exception to Ikea’s decision to pull advertising.

On Tuesday, former Ikea France chief executive Jean-Louis Baillot was given a two-year suspended sentence and handed a €50,000 fine for a spying operation that snooped on hundreds of employees, job applicants and difficult customers.

“IKEA has decided to boycott GB News because of our alleged values. Here are IKEA’s values – a French CEO who is a criminal with a two year suspended jail sentence for spying on staff,” he wrote on Twitter.

Stop Funding Hate, a social media campaign group that previously organised boycotts of some centre-right British newspapers,  highlighted the brand's advertising with GB News on Monday afternoon.

Kopparberg was the first to suspend advertising on Tuesday when it said one of its adverts was aired without its "knowledge or consent".

Grolsch said it would no longer appear on GB News and it did not associate with platforms that opposed values of "inclusion and openness".

Nivea, which blamed algorithms for automatically linking its adverts to the channel, said it would suspend advertising for three months pending a review of the channel’s content.

The Open University said advertising with GB News had been halted with immediate effect, and that none was planned with the broadcaster.

Pinterest apologised for advertising with GB News, claiming it had no knowledge of the placement and would suspend its commercials from the channel.

Sky Media distributes advertising across a range of channels including GB News. The new channel is viewed as a challenger to established broadcasters BBC and Sky News and promises to serve audiences with a mixture of “original news, opinion and debate”.

Mr Neil previously cited Fox News and the more centrist MSNBC as inspiration for GB News but he insisted the channel would not “be shouty, angry television that denies people the space to have their say”.

Media regulator Ofcom described the channel as offering an “unapologetically partisan, right-of-centre take on events”.