So the board are all ex-Tories are they ? Or are the rest so weak that they allow themselves to be swayed by one right wing member ?
Did I say that-no!
However Gibb and the rest of the board are also expected to be impartial especially if it involves any editorial input. His wiki page suggests this is certainly not the case:
In 2020, he led a successful consortium bid to buy
The Jewish Chronicle. The consortium's bid was backed by journalist
Sir William Shawcross, former Labour MP
John Woodcock, and journalist
John Ware.Gibb has refused to say who funded the consortium bid, believed to be around £3.5 million. In his declaration of interest on the BBC website, Gibb stated that he owned a 100 per cent holding in Jewish Chronicle Media.
Alan Rusbridger, writing in
The Independent, made the point that,
"the BBC board's own website commits them to 'submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office'. They should restrict information 'only when the wider public interest clearly demands'." Rusbridger continued by saying that Gibb had "flatly ignored my questions about his role as the sole named director of the JC. Nor will he tell anyone whose money is behind the paper he 'owns'"
According to former
Chronicle journalist Lee Harpin, Gibb made a habit of coming into the office and checking what stories were topping the news list;
Harpin was told the new owners wanted more views "well to the right of the Tory party" According to Harpin, Gibb interviewed candidates for a senior editor position and appointed
Jake Wallis Simons.
Gibb departed as a director of the
Chronicle on August 20, 2024, passing ownership to Jonathan Kandel, a fellow consortium member, and the ex-Labour peer
Lord Austin of Dudley. The people ultimately responsible for the company's debts remained unknown. Gibb retained sole directorship of "The JC Media and Culture Preservation Initiative", a community interest company sharing a correspondence address with
The Jewish Chronicle.
Gibb described himself as a "
Thatcherite Conservative".
He was an editorial advisor for GB News prior to its launch in 2021
In August 2022, former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis stated that Gibb was an "active agent of the Conservative party" who played a significant role in determining the nature of the corporation's news output.
In September 2024, after The Jewish Chronicle was forced to apologise for publishing a string of fabricated stories about the Gaza war, Alan Rusbridger queried how Gibb could, as a member of the BBC's editorial guidelines and standard committee, sit on a panel and participate in an upcoming review of the impartiality of the BBC's war coverage
In July 2025, Gibb's impartiality was again questioned in an open letter from over 400 media figures to the BBC, which stated: "we are concerned that an individual with close ties to the Jewish Chronicle … has a say in the BBC's editorial decisions in any capacity, including the decision not to broadcast
