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Comment by heurisko | Hacker News Reader

I have watched a bit of GB News, it was fairly unremarkable.

I have seen a strong response to them by a group "Stop Funding Hate" who have put pressure on advertisers to boycott the channel.

Given how little time the channel has been running, and that it includes former BBC presenters such as Andrew Neil, I find this fairly censorious.

If they abide by the rules by Ofcom, where they are required to maintain "due impartiality", I don't mind if people want to talk and investigate what is important to them.

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I don't mind either, it's fairly tame stuff. But ultimately it's yet another outlet banging on about 'wokeness', despite the fact they say there is too much of that. In fact I suspect they'll have their own brand of woke and cancel culture. They'll boycott Ikea for pulling their ads, and cancel people who don't wear poppies.

Is your criticism about GB News, that you think "woke" debates are trivial, e.g. "Baa Baa Green Sheep and Banning Christmas"?

Because it seems there is more to it than that, as some people, after all, want to bankrupt them on the account they are spreading hatred.

If they are occupied by trivial matters, then why are they attracting such a strong backlash?

You appear to be finding GBN guilty of something they:

a. Haven't done

b. Are strongly against

... on the belief that wokeness and cancel culture is nothing beyond generic "fear of change", despite the fact that they were on air less than 72 hours before a malicious radical left organization started trying to destroy them completely by lying to their advertisers. IKEA has by the way now recognized that they were lied to.

That seems like a pretty large mis-understanding of the situation. When people rail against wokeness and cancel culture, they mean things like this.

> I find this fairly censorious.

Advertisers withdrawing their custom isn't censorship. GB News can still remain on air if they find some other source of funding.

They are being pressured to withdraw their custom, based on, arguably, unfounded accusations of GB News spreading hate. A viewpoint that many don't share.

One of the advertisers, COOP, recognise this is an issue, so they have a policy to "Not seek to affect the editorial independence of publications or channels".

They declined to withdraw their custom, as they knew to do so would be censorious.

Other companies might find it expedient by acting as censors in the short term, but others, like COOP, seem to realise it's unwise to withdraw commercial contracts under pressure from an activist group campaigning against alleged speech that they don't agree with.

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