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From the BBC to Channel 4: public broadcasting on the brink
The Tories are trying to argue that privatising Channel 4 will support it, not simply speed up the profit-driven 'Netflixication' of our screens and the end of our distinctive programming. We must resist this, writes GRANVILLE WILLIAMS
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries on the main stage during the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. Picture date Tuesday October 5, 2021.

CULTURE SECRETARY Nadine Dorries has done it again. After the gaffe last November before the media and culture select committee where she confidently stated Channel 4 received public funding, she has now stated on Ian Dale’s LBC radio show that Channel 5 “was privatised three to five years ago.”

The channel was established in 1997 (four groups bid for it) and the pornographer Richard Desmond acquired it in 2011, followed by the US media group Viacom in 2014. It was never publicly owned and therefore could never be privatised.

When her error was pointed out she dismissed it as “nit-picking.”

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