A hedge fund manager who owns three right-wing UK media outlets has called for the BBC to be “broken up” and its fact-checking service “shut down”.

Sir Paul Marshall – proprietor of GB News, The Spectator, and Unherd – was speaking last week (20 May) at the Pharos Foundation, an educational charity that received £350,000 from Marshall’s charity Sequoia Trust in 2023.

Pharos co-founder and director Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, a climate science denial campaign group, is a significant backer of Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch.

In his speech, titled ‘Reflections of an Accidental Media Owner’, Marshall said: “the BBC squats like a giant toad in the middle of the UK media landscape”, calling it “a propaganda arm of the state, who [sic] are ultimately its paymasters.”

The multi-millionaire, who runs the hedge fund Marshall Wace, added that “the BBC should be broken up” to separate its “public service elements” like news and documentaries from “entertainment, drama, sport”, adding: “The latter should be privatised and allowed to complete to compete with other entertainment companies.”

Marshall also took aim at BBC Verify, the corporation’s fact-checking service founded in 2023 to cover and debunk online misinformation, calling for the service to be “shut down”.

Marshall accused progressive groups like Stop Funding Hate, HOPE not hate, and Led by Donkeys of acting like “school yard bullies” on social media.

“Unfortunately most of the disinformation agents who seek to track sites or individuals under the misinformation rubric have an explicit or near explicit left-wing agenda,” Marshall said. “This very much includes BBC Verify which is frankly an abuse of taxpayer money and should be shut down.”

GB News has accused of spreading misleading information – including conspiracy theories – since it launched in June 2021, and has been regularly probed by broadcast regulator Ofcom.

In February 2024, HOPE not hate revealed that Marshall had been liking and retweeting posts on X expressing a wide variety of anti-Muslim views, including a post that called for the “mass expulsions” of refugees. Responding to HOPE not hate, a representative for Marshall said: “He posts on a wide variety of subjects and those cited represent a small and unrepresentative sample of over 5,000 posts. This sample does not represent his views.”

As DeSmog has reported, GB News frequently platforms individuals who deny basic climate science, while its guests and presenters attacked climate action nearly 1,000 times in the immediate run-up and aftermath of the 2024 general election.

BBC Verify has debunked false claims about climate issues, including whether the UK is meeting its net zero targets, on the supposed need for new North Sea oil and gas extraction, and false claims about extreme weather events.

As DeSmog has revealed, Marshall’s hedge fund Marshall Wace had billions invested in fossil fuels as of June 2023. One of its major investors, the private equity giant KKR, which is tipped to buy Thames Water, is itself a significant fossil fuel investor.

Richard Wilson, founder of Stop Funding Hate, told DeSmog: “A fossil fuel magnate is pushing for the break-up of the BBC – and lobbying for its fact-checking service to be shut down – while bankrolling a TV channel that pumps out toxic misinformation on climate change.

“GB News has lost over £100 million as advertisers continue to steer clear. So it’s understandable that the channel’s owner would want to lash out at Stop Funding Hate supporters. But we’re happy to take these attacks as a badge of honour – and another sign that our campaigning is working.”

Marshalling the Right

Marshall is a major player in the transatlantic network of radical right-wing politics. He is a co-founder with Canadian activist Jordan Peterson of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), an anti-climate lobby group to which Marshall’s Sequoia Trust gave £1 million in 2023.

His attacks on the BBC echo those of Reform UK, whose leader Nigel Farage receives a six-figure salary to host his own show on GB News.

Reform’s manifesto for the 2024 election included a pledge to scrap the BBC licence fee, labelling the broadcaster “institutionally biased” and “wasteful”.

“Marshall and his professional disinfluencers know they’ve utterly lost the fight on facts, and instead of being correct, they’ve started attacking the fact checking referees at the BBC,” said Philip Newell, communications co-chair of the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition.

“In a healthy democracy, unbiased news is a vital tool of holding the rich accountable – which is exactly why one part of the disinformation playbook is to attack fact checkers and media institutions that speak truth to power. That an oily hedge fund baron has attacked the BBC only further confirms its validity and value.”

More recently, Donald Trump’s administration in the U.S. cut government funding for public broadcasters NPR and PBS, accusing them of bias.

The Pharos Foundation, which offers “Marshall fellowships” in Sir Paul’s honour, is also politically connected.

Pharos director Neil Record donated £10,000 and the use of office space to Kemi Badenoch’s campaign for the Tory leadership last autumn. Badenoch stayed at Record’s Gloucestershire estate in February ahead of a flagship speech attacking net zero targets.

Record is chair of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which claims carbon dioxide emissions are “not pollution” and could be a “benefit” to the planet.

He is also a life vice president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an anti-regulation think tank that has received funding from the oil giant BP.

Pharos was also co-founded by historian Nigel Biggar, who was nominated for a peerage by Badenoch in late 2024.

After purchasing The Spectator in September 2024 for £100 million, Marshall appointed former Conservative Party Cabinet minister Michael Gove as its editor.

Gove is the founder of think tank Policy Exchange, whose head of political economy James Vitali is a current Pharos research fellow. Marshall donated £890,000 to Policy Exchange between 2020 and 2023.

The chair of Pharos’ development committee, Sian Hansen, until recently worked as chief operating officer at CT Group, the lobbying firm that has represented the Prosperity Institute (formerly known as the Legatum Institute), whose funder the Legatum Group co-owns GB News with Paul Marshall.

CT Group has lobbied on behalf of oil and gas companies, and its clients have included the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association and BHP, which has mining and oil assets.