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Legal campaigners at Good Law Project have launched a legal challenge against broadcast regulator Ofcom, arguing that the public body has failed to take action to stop Murdoch-owned station Talk (formerly TalkTV and TalkRadio) from allegedly “breaking the law with a torrent of misinformation and transphobic hate.”
Ofcom received complaints from Good Law Project and 21,000 of its supporters on 18 July 2025 about 11 programmes broadcast on Talk, complaining about how the programmes, its presenters and guests discussed transgender issues. Talk is broadcast on radio and as video online, after News UK shuttered its loss-making TV operations in 2024.
Ofcom decided not to investigate any of the complaints in September. In October 2025, GLP wrote to Ofcom raising a number of questions about Ofcom’s response to their complaints. GLP also highlighted potential concerns about three of the programmes under the Broadcasting Code.
Ofcom then withdrew its own decisions and redid the assessments from scratch, because it decided its approach to “major matters of political controversy” needed “reconsideration” and wanted to give broadcasters clearer guidance.
This March, Ofcom again cleared ten of the programmes but launched an investigation into the eleventh (Ian Collins, Talk, 23 June 2025). That show saw Collins say “spoiler alert: ‘non-binary’ is just an invented thing that somebody came up with” and refer to a “pretence that men can get pregnant too” when discussing trans men.
In Collins’ show a week later, a guest made the claim that allowing people to change their legal gender on a government-backed digital ID “will make the crimes of catfishing much easier online.” Both Collins and his guest agreed “it’s not true” that trans women are women. Ofcom and Talk-owner News UK argue gender-critical beliefs are (or may be, in Ofcom’s view) protected philosophical beliefs under equality legislation. Gender reassignment is also a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.
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The Ofcom Broadcasting Code says that channels must protect the public from “harmful and/or offensive material”, must not misrepresent facts, and, when discussing major issues of “political controversy” and “current public policy”, must broadcast a “wide range of significant views”. But hosts and guests on Talk “consistently spew misinformation and transphobic hate, without providing a balancing point of view,” Good Law Project argues.
A show hosted by former Brexit Party MEP (and ex-GB News anchor) Alex Phillips on trans issues on 29 June 2025 saw her suggest that trans parents breastfeeding was “sick”.
“It’s a perversion, quite frankly,” she told listeners, dubbing it “ghoulish and gross… shouldn’t be allowed”.
On Kevin O’Sullivan’s show, The Political Asylum, on 1st July 2025, a guest described “Rose” — a trans NHS worker at the centre of the live Darlington nurses’ Equality Act litigation — as “a bloke who wanted to invade your private safe female space.”
Ofcom is clear that O’Sullivan “did misgender Rose on several occasions”, but concluded this was protected gender-critical belief and didn’t breach the Code.
Good Law Project stated: “Ofcom failed to take appropriate action to stop TalkTV [sic] from breaking the law, only opening an investigation into one out of the eleven incidents subject to complaints.”
Now, Good Law Project has applied for a judicial review and if accepted, will go to the High Court to make the case that Ofcom’s inaction is not only a dereliction of duty, but that it is irrational and unlawful.
‘A Megaphone for Billionaires’
Good Law Project campaigns manager Charlene Pink said: “Ofcom is giving TalkTV a free pass to blatantly break the law. Instead of keeping hate and misinformation off our airwaves, Ofcom is allowing TalkTV to serve as a megaphone for billionaires to spread toxic lies and amplify dangerous, far-right rhetoric for their own political gain.”
An Ofcom spokesperson told Byline Times: “Ofcom stands by its decisions and will defend them in Court.”
Good Law Project is challenging four key decisions by Ofcom. One was that Ofcom admitted comments made about trans people were highly offensive but say that those comments were mitigated by the context.
The anti-hate group says that mitigation is not enough and that the comments had to be justified by the context and they were not. On another show (21st June 2025) Talk host Alex Phillips said that trans-inclusive policies were allowing “hulking great perverts going into children’s toilets” and that there is a “Venn diagram, the overlap of certain men who like to sort of dress up as women, and fetish, of actually getting a sexual kick out of all of this”.
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Guest Ella Whelan did challenge this, saying: “You have to be fair — the vast majority of trans people are not hulking great perverts… lots of trans individuals aren’t on the activist bandwagon… they’re just getting on with their lives… everybody should just be allowed to be who they want to be. And I sign up to that… we should have flexibility when it comes to people’s identity”. Ofcom deemed this enough to balance Phillips’ views.
On this programme, as with others, Ofcom stated that it “took into account all relevant contextual factors including audience expectations.”
“In particular, Ofcom considered that this was clearly signposted as a personal view programme, where the presenter, Alex Phillips, is known to express her strong opinions on topical issues of political controversy and public policy, and viewers would have expected to see content of this nature in such a programme. We have taken careful account of the broadcaster’s and audience’s right to freedom of expression.”
A Dispute Over ‘Major Matters’
Ofcom does not treat trans issues as a “major” matter of national controversy, and therefore places lower requirements on broadcasters to guarantee balance when discussing them.
GLP says it believes Ofcom has misapplied the law and that trans issues, including use of single sex spaces and puberty blockers in particular, are in fact ‘major matters’.
Ofcom rules say that “views and fact must not be misrepresented”. However GLP argues Talk figures have repeatedly, and wrongly, claimed that the recent Supreme Court ruling in favour of gender-critical group For Women Scotland found that trans women are men. In fact, the Supreme Court stated explicitly in its judgement: “It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word “woman” other than when it is used in the provisions of the Equality Act 2010.”
Ofcom also decided that, despite Talk presenters repeatedly sharing what GLP dubs transphobic views and dismissing opposing views, they did not abuse their positions in a way that undermined due impartiality.
News UK was contacted for comment.
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