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China's state-owned broadcaster has had its licence to broadcast in the UK

revoked by media watchdog Ofcom.

Ofcom said the company that owns the UK licence for China Global Television
Network (CGTN) doesn't have day-to-day control over the channel, which is
against its rules.

Star China Media Limited (SCML), which owns the licence, "did not have
editorial responsibility" over the English-language satellite news channel,
Ofcom said.
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"As such, SCML does not meet the legal requirement of having control over Covid-19 stories
the licensed service, and so is not a lawful broadcast licensee."

In the UK, broadcasting laws say licensees must have control over their service
and its editorial policies.

Ofcom said an entity called China Global Television Network Corporation is

"the ultimate decision maker" over programmes.

But the regulator said it was unable to transfer the licence to that company
because it is "ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, which is
not permitted under UK broadcasting law". Top surgeon tackles Covid 'vaccine
hesitancy'

'Efforts have been exhausted'

Such a transfer was also not possible because "crucial information was missing
from the application", while CGTN had "repeatedly failed to respond to
important questions" and had not carried out a restructure, according to
Ofcom.

The regulator said it had given the satellite news channel "significant time to
come into compliance with the statutory rules". It added: "Those efforts have
How will we heat homes in zero
now been exhausted."
carbon Britain?
The action to revoke the licence comes seven months aer Ofcom found
CGTN in breach of broadcasting regulations for airing a UK citizen's allegedly
forced confession.

'Forced confession' violated UK broadcasting rules

In July, Ofcom ruled that CGTN had been "unjust" to show footage of
investigator Peter Humphrey "appearing to confess to a criminal offence". The
channel was named CCTV News at the time of the broadcasts in 2013 and
2014.
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And last May, CGTN was found to have breached the UK's broadcasting code ★★★☆☆
by failing to preserve due impartiality in its coverage of the Hong Kong
protests.

The country that's rejecting the

Covid vaccine
Barely half an hour aer the Ofcom announcement, China's foreign ministry
repeated its demand for a public apology from the BBC over its coverage of
the pandemic in China. Some well-informed souls say that the timing may well
have been genuinely coincidental - rather than a retaliatory gesture.

China has separately complained about the BBC's coverage of the mass
detention of Uighur Muslims - which has prompted an international outcry -
and the BBC's coverage of Covid-19. I'm told the BBC is standing by its
reporting.

The context to all this is that in recent years, state broadcasters have become
central to the international media ecosystem, seen as tools of so power and What has the government done
propaganda. about the South Africa strain?

And there is a broader tech Cold War between China and the West, and
particularly the US, over how open the internet should be.

Once upon a time global conflicts were mostly about land and natural
resources. Today, they're increasingly about information.

Shortly aer the Ofcom decision was announced, China said it had lodged
"stern representations" to the BBC over what it called "fake news" in its
UK announces 19,114 cases on
coverage of Covid-19 and urged the broadcaster to apologise.
Friday
The corporation should "stop harbouring ideological bias, stop smearing
China, uphold professional ethics, and do objective, fair reporting on China",
China's foreign ministry said.

The BBC said it stood by its "accurate and fair reporting of events in China and
totally rejects these unfounded accusations of fake news or ideological bias".

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