OFCOM’S decision to revoke the broadcasting licence for the China Global Television Network (CGTN) is a marked escalation in the new cold war against China.
Just as significantly, it is an attack on free speech which is likely to have consequences for media outlets far smaller and more vulnerable than the state-owned TV network in question.
Though Ofcom hides behind a formal ban on governments holding broadcasting licences, its chosen wording, which cites CGTN’s control not by the Chinese state but by “the Chinese Communist Party,” underlines the political nature of the decision.
As the No Cold War network of campaigners and peace activists points out, state broadcasters are no rarity: Ofcom has not taken action against France Televisions, Japan’s NHK, South Korea’s KBS — or for that matter the BBC.
“It is well known, and publicly acknowledged, that CGTN is a Chinese state broadcaster and viewers can therefore take this into account in judging its services and broadcasts,” the group argues.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin notes accurately that this fact was equally well known to British authorities, and has been ever since CGTN first aired over here well over a decade ago. Its status has not changed.
Chinese state ownership obviously affects CGTN’s output — but banning it on those grounds is pure hypocrisy from a regulator that upholds the BBC’s laughable claims of impartiality.
Britain’s state broadcaster spent much of the last five years engaged in the character assassination of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, mocking him up in front of Moscow’s Red Square during news reports, selectively editing interviews to make him look soft on terrorists and even arranging the resignation of one of the shadow cabinet live on air to undermine him.
Beyond the BBC, No Cold War is right to point out that “channels with clear political agendas” abound, from the pro-Democrat CNN to the pro-Republican Fox News in the US.
Social media companies such as Twitter have taken to placing warnings on state-controlled accounts, informing those reading them of the fact.
But warnings might be equally helpful when it comes to privately owned media.
“This platform is owned by Rupert Murdoch,” or “by Lord Rothermere.” “The trust that owns this newspaper has investments in these companies.”
The Morning Star has nothing to hide — we print “proudly owned by our readers” on our masthead every day.
The reality is that we are bombarded by Establishment propaganda on a daily — hourly — basis. The removal of perspectives critical of the ruling-class consensus in Britain is damaging in a media landscape that is already dominated by that consensus.
Real concerns over unsubstantiated claims spread on the internet and conspiracy theories are exploited by those who own and control the monopoly media to call for greater state and corporate regulation.
The abuse of this power is already happening: in India hundreds of Twitter accounts critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi or sympathetic to the farmers’ movement that is shaking the country have been shut down.
The unaccountable power of corporate giants like Twitter and Facebook to decide what is and is not acceptable speech has become a major talking point since Donald Trump was banned from them, with French President Emmanuel Macron the latest to warn of the ominous consequences for democracy.
But state regulation without democratic accountability is no better, and with the Tories hinting that former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre may soon be the new Ofcom chief, we risk what Corbyn has called an alliance of “media oligarchs, government and big tech firms” exercising near-total control of mass communication.
Resisting this means opposing bans on broadcasters and social media censorship of political groups.
It must also mean building the alternative, a socialist media that is not owned and controlled by the rich.
