SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
From NPR News, This Is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Scott Detrow in Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And I'm Mary Louise Kelly in London, where we stepped outside onto Regent Street today and were greeted with this...
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Say it loud, say it clear, Donald Trump's not welcome here.
KELLY: Not perhaps the welcome the White House was hoping for during this second state visit by President Trump to the U.K. This is thousands of people out for a march organized by the Stop Trump Coalition. Among them, Chris Porteus, 71 years old, traveled up from Devon in southwest England for the march. He's holding a sign that reads, no to racism, no to Trump.
CHRIS PORTEUS: So I'm not happy about the fact that he's been allowed to come to this country.
KELLY: So for Americans who'll be listening to this, what's your message?
PORTEUS: My message is, try your hardest - protest like this - try your hardest to demonstrate to your countrypeople that he's not the right person to lead your great nation.
KELLY: Now, President Trump wasn't here to hear this. He spent the day out at Windsor Castle, an hour or so's drive west of here, which means he also missed the protesters carrying posters reading, migrants welcome, Trump not welcome. Also, a life-size grinning image of Trump labeled, Epstein's BFF - Epstein being Jeffrey Epstein.; BFF, best friends forever. Not to mention plenty of banners we cannot quote here on a family news program. Samantha Walker - 54 years old, lives in London, used to live in New York - walked up to us and asked, would you like one? She was handing out stickers reading, stop Trump.
Tell me why you're out - this is the way you want to spend your Wednesday afternoon.
SAMANTHA WALKER: I took the time off work so I could come. Terrified about what's happening in America, especially for women's rights, gynecological rights. I have a lot of friends who still live in America. Terrified for them and, you know, shared in their just, like, feeling absolutely destroyed in November when he was voted in again.
KELLY: A taste of the protests here in central London today. Among the news outlets hustling to cover them and all the other activity surrounding President Trump's visit is the conservative upstart TV channel GB News - GB, as in Great Britain. Here's what it sounded like when we dropped by today.
MICHAEL BOOKER: That's the master control room, so they're managing all the feeds coming in. This is the news desk here. And these are the producers who are doing the on-air work. And then I come over and point at the screens a lot and say, why are you not doing that?
KELLY: (Laughter).
That's Michael Booker, the editorial director, walking us past the news desk. He's got one eye on an anchor broadcasting live from studios a few feet behind us, another on screens showing his team on the ground in Windsor.
BOOKER: Now, when we've got an American president coming here - whoever it is - you know, it's a big event. We want to be doing it better than everyone else.
KELLY: Now, when I called GB News upstart that is because they're relatively new. GB News was founded four years ago.
BOOKER: I think the idea was that the other news channels and a lot of the media establishment in Britain had forgotten what they were there for originally - you know, to speak for the people or to bring the news to people what - that actually mattered to them. I'm from the north of England, and I felt that, particularly places in the north of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, they'd been forgotten. So we want to get into those communities and listen to what was going on in those communities.
KELLY: That formula seems to be working. Last month, the official ratings agency, Barb, found that GB News had overtaken the BBC as Britain's most-watched news channel for the first time. And it's taking a deliberately different approach than the Beeb in other ways, which I put to Michael Booker.
As I have mentioned to people here in London, hey, I'm going to go see the GB News newsroom, they say, they're on the right. You lean right. Your coverage leans to the right on the political spectrum. Is that fair? Is that true?
BOOKER: I think we try and be common sense. I don't come in as editorial director thinking we need to be right today or left today or - I just think we just need to be correct.
KELLY: For Americans trying to figure out - who may not have heard of GB News...
BOOKER: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Who say, so is this the Fox News of Britain? - are you the Fox News of Britain?
BOOKER: We don't set out to be the Fox News of Britain. But in terms of understanding where we are, just simply, that - I suppose that's the nearest to what we are.
KELLY: The nearest equivalent.
BOOKER: But - yeah. But we're very different from Fox News. I was brought in because I was the - I'd been the editor of three national newspapers, and they'd been across the spectrum as well. It's not just, you know, a few media executives like myself telling you what to think. We want to hear what you think.
KELLY: Around this point in our interview with Booker, Christopher Hope wandered over. He's the political editor here at GB News. He had just come off air, microphone still pinned to his lapel because he's back on in a few minutes. I asked him about the issue of public trust, about using politicians as anchors.
Quite a few of your presenters come from the right side of the political spectrum. Is that intentional?
CHRISTOPHER HOPE: I don't - I didn't hire the presenters. I think we...
KELLY: So is that a fair characterization?
HOPE: I think there's a sense that the mainstream media is a bit left of center and a bit in a kind of a bubble where our viewers tell us they don't raise issues they care about, such as immigration, such as concerns about crime. Now, the broadcasters themselves that I'm talking about would dispute that, but we hear that from the viewers. So, you know, we want to have the entire conversation. We do want to talk about the issues that they, our viewers, care about, like immigration, that it's OK to be worried about immigration - it's not a racist thing or a far-right thing - and just trying to talk to them and understand that and give them a voice because, previously, you know, they felt looked down on, I think.
KELLY: Right. Is there an example of a story that's been big in the headlines...
HOPE: So the double...
KELLY: ...That GB news covered differently from the other existing channels, and that was intentionally?
HOPE: Yes. I mean, I think there has been. I think we were first to cover properly the protests outside a hotel in Epping called the Bell Hotel. The policy for the government and the last government has been to put illegal-arrived migrants up in hotels, and that's caused protests around the country. Many people can't afford a hotel room in this country, but our taxes are paying for people who arrive here illegally to stay in a hotel. You know, what's their background? No one knows. They arrived here illegally, etc. So raising that question, talking about it, is one of the big issues we've been doing at GB News.
KELLY: As you can hear, the questions they're raising at GB News are going to offend some people. They're OK with that. For now, Christopher Hope is focused on tomorrow. He'll be at President Trump's press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He's trying to figure out what he'll ask if he gets called on. One thing to watch, he says - both British and American reporters will likely have questions about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
GB News, meanwhile, has big plans across the pond in Washington. This coming Monday, they are launching "The Late Show Live" from their brand-new Washington bureau. It's an attempt to explain the U.S. and U.S. politics to their audience here in Britain. And then there's this - GB News recently announced a partnership with Trump Media.
The press release, which is up on your website, quotes Devin Nunes, who is the Trump Media chief executive. He describes the goal of the partnership, in part, as, quote, "putting another dent in the global woke news monopoly." Is that how you see it?
BOOKER: Well, that's what he - the way that he sees it. I'm not going to argue with that. Whether some people are woke or not, I don't particularly care, really. My job, purely and simply, as editorial director is to do the best I can for the people. We are the people's channel.
KELLY: Michael Booker, editorial director, speaking with me today in his newsroom here at GB News - or as he would tell you, the people's channel.
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