and beyond," Nielsen said, adding that the channel had less than a million viewers, which is less than half of the Sky Cinema Sci-Fi Horror channel. "It's important to remember that while symbolically important, television distribution is trivial really in terms of CGTN's reach in the U.K. can still access CGTN, they just can't watch it on TV. Nielsen pointed out that anyone in the U.K. While the Ofcom decision was about the ownership structure of CGTN, China's decision to block the BBC was to do with content, Nielsen said. Rasmus Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, said the BBC decision can't be compared to the CGTN decision.
Sambrook said BBC World News, which is a commercial operation, will lose out on some income as a result of the ban. and China - in line with a shift in relationships between China and the West more broadly." Sambrook added: "The moves can perhaps best be seen to reflect a chilling of relationships between the U.K. These kind of 'tit-for-tat' media moves are reminiscent of past years (during the cold war for example) when they were not unusual."
"China already bans BBC services in Chinese languages and to a large extent the BBC's online site. "China has predictably responded in kind against BBC World News," said Sambrook, who is now the director of the Center of Journalism at Cardiff University. Richard Sambrook, the former director of the BBC's Global News division, which was responsible for leading the BBC's international news services, told CNBC that the BBC ban is a direct response. 4 that CGTN had filed misleading ownership statements and is "ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party."
The ban comes after Ofcom, the U.K.'s media regulator, withdrew the license for CGTN, which is China's English language news channel. Meanwhile, Matthew Brennan, a China-based technology analyst, told CNBC that the block is a shame, but not unsurprising. The FCCC said it thinks such language is "intended to send a warning to foreign media operating in China that they may face sanctions if their reporting does not follow the Chinese party line about Xinjiang and other ethnic minority regions."Ī BBC employee, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the discussion, told CNBC that it's "obviously worrying for the audience over there that a neutral news service has gone."
The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, a professional association of Beijing-based journalists, said it was concerned by the reasons China's National Radio and Television Administration gave for the BBC ban, including the charge that BBC broadcasts have harmed China's national interests and undermined China's national unity. CNBC has reached out to the Chinese embassy in London for comment. "China has some of the most severe restrictions on media and internet freedoms across the globe, and this latest step will only damage China's reputation in the eyes of the world," he said on Twitter. He added: "It is of deep concern when our journalists are restricted and their work curtailed."īritish Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Thursday that China's decision to ban BBC World News in mainland China is an "unacceptable curtailing" of media freedom. The broadcaster's director general said on Twitter that the latest developments are "deeply worrying" and argued that the BBC should be able to do its reporting "without fear or favour." Tim Davie, the head of the BBC, hit back at China's decision on Saturday, saying "media freedom matters." The Chinese embassy in London did not respond to a CNBC request for comment but the Chinese government says that its response to the virus has been swift and effective. China has criticized the BBC for its reporting on Xinjiang and the coronavirus.