Germany has become an unwitting casualty in the ongoing media war between the UK and China. A licence-sharing agreement means that China’s CGTN news network may no longer broadcast in Germany after a ban in Britain.
British media regulator Ofcom banned China’s state-controlled CGTN from broadcasting in the UK last week, after finding that its license was “wrongfully held” by an arm of the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing responded on Thursday by banning the BBC from Chinese airwaves and accusing it of violating “requirements that news should be truthful and fair.”
Ofcom’s CGTN ban affects not just British viewers, but Germans too. According to an agreement among several European countries, CGTN’s license in Germany had been approved by Ofcom as part of a sharing initiative, DW reported on Friday. As such, broadcast companies there began ending distribution of CGTN, the German news site reported.
CGTN is not the first foreign-owned TV network to be taken off the air by Ofcom. Back in 2012, the regulator revoked Press TV’s broadcast license after the Iranian network aired an interview with a journalist jailed in Tehran that was allegedly conducted under duress.
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