GB News owner Paul Marshall slammed for climate lies

Over 100 church leaders have written an open letter to Paul Marshall, a self-professed Christian and owner of GB News. The missive criticised the far-right media baron for platforming climate-hostile pseudoscience, and called for Marshall to right his channel’s wrongs.

In 2009, Marshall told the Evening Standard that:

I am a committed Church of England Christian. I believe we are all made in God’s image, that we all have gifts and that education is the key to realising our potential.

Unfortunately, that commitment to education doesn’t seem to extend to his GB News channel. The far-right propaganda distributors frequently platforms fossil-fuel shills and demonstrably false climate-hostile views. In fact, it hosted 953 attacks on climate action in and around the 2024 general election.

GB News — ‘Significant responsibility’

As such, church leaders have now called out Marshall’s glaring hypocrisy. The open letter’s signatories include three assistant bishops, two bishops, and the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

The open letter stressed the need to love and care for the world itself, going on to state that:

It is this love which has led climate scientists Katharine Hayhoe and the late Sir John Houghton, both evangelical Christians, to dedicate their lives to understanding why the planet is heating beyond what can be explained naturally, and then to suggest, with passion and conviction, what our response should be to this human-caused crisis.

They then get to the heart of the matter, and their reason for writing to Marshall:

We share all of this with you not only because you are a professing Christian and fellow brother in Christ, but because you have significant responsibility given your portfolio of media holdings (UnHerd, GB News, The Spectator): outlets which shape the thinking of millions of people and have a significant impact on our public discourse and politics.

‘Personal financial interests’

After listing numerous examples of GB News shilling for the climate-wrecking lobby, the letter moved on to hitting Marshall where it will hurt the most — his vast wealth. They called for the millionaire to make his fossil-fuel investments clear, and for his media empire to do likewise:

As of 2023, your hedge fund had £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels. If you have personal financial interests in fossil fuels, we ask, in the spirit of transparency, that you declare these interests before making public statements about the climate crisis and what our collective response to it should be.

Likewise, we would ask that GB News presenters and guests, as well as contributors to The Spectator or UnHerd, might also, in the spirit of transparency and in the interest of honest debate, declare any personal interests in fossil fuels up front (on air or in print/online) prior to engaging in any discussion related to climate, energy, the natural world or decarbonisation.

Given a direct callout from the leaders of a faith Marshall claims to follow, you might hope that he’d show at least a mote of contrition. But of course, the far-right darling did no such thing.

Hotter than hell

In reply, Marshall stated that:

I share the concerns for stewardship of the planet, which is currently in a gradual warming cycle. This has to be balanced with a commitment to human flourishing.

For that reason I do not support the current policy of unilateral net zero, which the UK is pursuing out of step with the rest of the world. It is undermining the country’s long-term prosperity, imposing excess costs on businesses, discouraging new growth industries and having an outsized negative impact on the elderly and the poor.

This bollocks about a “warming cycle” is pseudoscience. The vast majority of experts agree that global warming is caused by human actions — and that we need to reverse course, desperately and urgently.

Unfortunately, men like Marshall don’t have to listen to experts. They have something better than expertise — they have money and power. With those two things, they can buy — just as an example — their own news channel to repeat their lies. And, with enough repetition, those lies become accepted ‘truth’.

Marshall’s reaction to his own faith leaders is as predictable as it is depressing. After all, the Bible doesn’t mince words about the fate of the wealthy, but the GB News owner is still busy building his portfolio. It’s just a pity that he seems determined to bring fire down on us all before he meets his judgement.

Featured image via WikimediaCommons