Pastor Chris Oyakhilome’s TV channel fined £125,000 by the UK government
The Loveword TV station, which is owned by Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, has been fined £125,000 in the United Kingdom for broadcasting unproven conspiracy theories concerning Covid-19.
The TV channel broadcast a 29-hour program called the Global Day of Prayer on December 1st, 2020, during which many false statements regarding the coronavirus pandemic were made. The belief that the epidemic was ‘planned,’ that the ‘sinister’ vaccine can be used to insert ‘nanochips’ that can monitor and damage members of the public, and that the virus was somehow triggered by 5G is among these arguments.
The programme violated broadcasting laws by sharing “potentially negative” claims about COVID19, according to Ofcom, the UK’s media regulatory agency. Ofcom has petitioned Loveworld for making unsupported assumptions about coronavirus for the second time in a year.
In a statement released, Ofcom concluded Loveworld’s breach of broadcasting guidelines were ‘serious, repeated and reckless. The broadcasting authority said that the TV channel posed a risk of ‘serious harm’ to viewers who tuned in to watch the programme.
‘Loveworld’s failure to put these unsubstantiated statements into context risked serious harm to its audience,’ the statement said.
Ofcom added that the religious channels had the ‘potential to make people question the measures put in place to curb the spread of the novel Coronavirus.
‘They had the potential to undermine confidence in public health measures put in place to tackle COVID19 at a time when cases, hospital admissions and deaths were rising in the UK, and when people were looking for reliable information given advances in the vaccination programme” Ofcom statement read
Pastor Oyakhilome has repeatedly expressed doubts about the COVID19 pandemic. Recently, he blasted Christian leaders encouraging their members to take the COVID19 vaccine.