The BBC is considered more biased than GB News, according to a poll which also found that one in three people describe the corporation as "woke".

       A survey by CT Group found that 42 per cent of respondents believed that the BBC was biased, compared to 27 per cent who said the same of GB News, a fledgling channel accused by campaigners of "right wing" and "anti-woke" bias.

       GB News has faced a sustained campaign by activists attempting to pressure companies into withdrawing advertisements from the new channel. Now, Andrew Neil, its chairman, is said to be considering whether to return to the broadcaster after its appointment of Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, as a star presenter.

       Brendan Clarke-Smith, the Conservative MP for Bassetlaw, said: “These findings chime with what I hear from my constituents, who are sick of being preached to by media elites who live lives very different to their own.

       "They don’t want a news channel that speaks down to them or tells them their views and values are wrong. That’s why GB News has been so refreshing."

       In the poll of 1,000 adults, commissioned by GB News shortly after its launch in June, 26 per cent described the BBC as "too left wing", while a smaller proportion of 21 per cent said GB News was "too right wing". Some 34 per cent of people described the BBC as "woke" - a term originally used to describe attentiveness to injustices, but which now often has negative connotations associated with "cancel culture", such as the desire to avoid airing controversial views.

       Last year, Tim Davie, the new director general of the BBC, said that staff "urgently need to champion and recommit to impartiality", adding: “In the age of fake news, social media campaigns, echo chambers of opinion, and noisy partisan media outlets, this, surely, is our time.”

       Writing for The Telegraph, Mark Stoleson, the chief executive of Legatum, an investment firm helping to bankroll GB News, said the channel was "already giving its establishment rivals a run for their - or rather, your - money". He says the firm decided to back the new broadcaster because "the big media corporations were still displaying an intolerance for the views of Brits who live beyond the M25."

       He adds: "GB News is getting out of London to give a voice to the UK's underrepresented regional communities who previously felt unheard in the national conversation."

       Asked whether they considered GB News biased, 27 per cent of respondents said yes, while 36 per cent said no and 37 per cent said they did not know either way. Meanwhile, 42 per cent said they considered the BBC biased, with 46 per cent disagreeing and 12 per cent saying they did not know.

       A BBC spokesman said: "Independent research consistently shows BBC News is the most trusted news source in the UK and we need to be careful about making judgements based on a poll where ... many respondents won’t have seen the coverage of other smaller news providers, whereas eight out 10 people in the UK used BBC News each week last year.”