UK Revokes TV License For China Global Television Network

Reuters report­ed in Feb­ru­ary that the UK had revoked the TV license for Chi­na Glob­al Tele­vi­sion Net­work, con­clud­ing that it is ulti­mate­ly con­trolled by the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Accord­ing to the report:

Feb­ru­ary 4, 2021 Britain’s media reg­u­la­tor on Thurs­day revoked a Chi­nese TV licence after it con­clud­ed that the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty had ulti­mate edi­to­r­i­al respon­si­bil­i­ty for the chan­nel while Bei­jing lodged an offi­cial com­plaint over the BBC’s COVID-19 coverage.Britain and Chi­na have been exchang­ing barbs for months over Beijing’s crack­down on dis­sent in Hong Kong, con­cerns over the secu­ri­ty of Huawei tech­nol­o­gy and the treat­ment of Uighur Mus­lims in China’s remote Xin­jiang region.After an inves­ti­ga­tion, the British reg­u­la­tor Ofcom con­clud­ed that Chi­na Glob­al Tele­vi­sion Network’s (CGTN), an Eng­lish lan­guage inter­na­tion­al Chi­nese chan­nel, was ulti­mate­ly con­trolled by the Com­mu­nist Party.“Our inves­ti­ga­tion showed that the licence for Chi­na Glob­al Tele­vi­sion Net­work is held by an enti­ty which has no edi­to­r­i­al con­trol over its pro­grammes,” Ofcom said.

Read the rest here.

Chi­na retal­i­at­ed for the action a few days lat­er by ban­ning the BBC. This week, Ofcom fined Star Chi­na Media Lim­it­ed, the oper­at­ing com­pa­ny of Chi­na Glob­al Tele­vi­sion Net­work (CGTN),  £225,000 for seri­ous breach­es of the Broad­cast­ing Code.

The GIOR report­ed last Octo­ber on an Alliance for Secur­ing Democ­ra­cy report that state-backed out­lets such as T‑House or Chi­na Glob­al Tele­vi­sion Net­work (CGTN) and its com­men­ta­tors had likened the US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion debates to a “kinder­garten dust-up” and crit­i­cized both can­di­dates’ per­for­mances, although the over­all cov­er­age was slight­ly more favor­able to the Biden-Har­ris campaign.