Ofcom on Monday fined China Global Television Network (CGTN), a subsidiary of China Central Television, a total of £225,000 and found two complaints filed by Hong Kong dissidents to be valid.
Ofcom fined CGTN 100,000 pounds in response to a complaint by British private investigator Peter Humphrey. Humphrey accused CGTN of broadcasting footage of him being forced to confess to a crime in China in 2013.
Ofcom said CGTN “ought to have known that Han Fei Long confessed in the presence of those who were holding him before the trial, and there is reason to doubt whether he confessed in good faith and with knowledge of the circumstances”.
CGTN was also fined £125,000 for breaching the impartiality principle of the UK Broadcasting Code for five programmes about the Hong Kong demonstrations in 2019.
Ofcom has also ruled that CGTN will face further fines for airing footage of Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai and former British Consulate employee Cheng Man-kit being forced to confess guilt, saying that CGTN had not taken sufficient measures to ensure that the treatment of Gui Minhai’s guilty plea was “not unfair to Mr. Gui” and that CGTN did not respect Zheng Wenjie’s privacy and did not adequately reveal or report on the circumstances surrounding his guilty plea.
On February 4, 2021, Ofcom revoked the license of China Global Television Network (CGTN) on the grounds that the licensee, Star Chinese Media, had no substantive control over CGTN’s channels and was only a distributor, not a service provider, of CGTN in the UK. This is a violation of the 1990 UK Broadcasting Act, which states that “a broadcasting licensee must have control over the licensed service, including editorial oversight of the programs it broadcasts.
In addition, on February 12, Vodafone Germany announced that it would stop broadcasting CGTN programs in the country in accordance with Ofcom’s decision. Unlike the British initiative to stop broadcasting, this is due to the European Convention on Transfrontier Television of the Council of Europe, which the European Union signed with the Balkan countries and Ukraine in 1989. According to the agreement, a TV channel can broadcast in all the contracting states if it obtains a landing permit in one of the contracting states, and conversely, if a TV channel’s broadcasting permit is revoked by one of the contracting states, the license will expire in all the contracting states. In addition, CGTN is using the UK license to land in Germany and will remain a party to the agreement after Brexit, so if CGTN is unable to start broadcasting in Germany, it may be cut off by all contracting parties in the future.
In addition, on March 3, 2021 local Time, the French Supreme Audiovisual Council (CSA) approved CGTN’s application to locate in the country. According to French law, CGTN can land in France as long as it broadcasts through French communication satellites and transmits its signal in France; and there is no need to examine the background of the holder or the content of the broadcast, as long as the content broadcast by the station does not involve illegal content such as incitement to violence and hatred. At the same time, thanks to the European Convention on Cross-Border Television, CGTN has regained landing rights in all parties to the agreement, including the UK.
Recent Comments