One of Barbican Centre’s cavernous halls in London was packed on 14 September 2026 for the launch of the independent news channel Zeteo UK. The stage line up, hosted by founder and editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan, provided a mainly young audience assessments of the ‘broken state’ of the British media today and the need for change. Contributors in this first session were Mehdi Hasan, broadcaster Sangita Myska and journalist and writer Peter Oborne. The second session was an interview with Green Party leader Zack Polanski, with questions put by Mehdi Hasan and political journalist Shehab Khan, newly joined to Zeteo UK.
An example of the ‘broken state’ was Sangita Myska’s experience – she was told in April 2024 that she would no longer appear on LBC within 48 hours of challenging Israeli government spokesman Avi Hyman. She noted that because of an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) there were limits to what she could say, but the reason was her robust line of questioning – “the biggest lie of the British media is the claim that it holds power to account”. Within a few months after 7 October* it became clear to her that journalists could not speak openly about Palestine.
Peter Oborne reflected on his experiences in having pieces spiked because of editors’ concerns for keeping on the right side of advertisers. He coined the phrase ‘oligarchic media’ to describe the constraints on honest reporting. The media has failed to report on Israel’s application of the Dahiya doctrine, while headlines, such as the one on ‘beheaded babies’, have been proven false. He noted that Hamas’s actions were an atrocity, but the Israeli State’s response was genocide. He spoke of a “structural Islamophobia”, with the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham an example of “Media-State collaboration” that destroyed teaching careers and the educational progress of thousands of children, documented in his book, The Fate of Abraham, Why the West is Wrong about Islam. His personal credo as a journalist was “comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable”.
Zack Polanski arrived fresh from campaigning in the forthcoming Holborn & St Pancras by-election, the seat vacated by former Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to stand down. He made his case for standing against Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate, who though a local council leader, would in his view, end up as a back bencher unwilling to challenge the Party leadership on critical issues that included: a wealth tax, full nationalisation of water companies, freezing of new data centres. He shared details of his own personal journey. As a person of Jewish faith who wanted a space space for Jewish people, “never again is not just for me, but for a group of people, for all people.” The Palestinians had the right to resist.
Zeteo UK has been launched as an independent outlet, according to Mehdi Hasan, “to disrupt the British media”. The support of Substack, the online publishing platform, was acknowledged.
Zeteo UK website click here.
*correction from original posting