Chinese Broadcasts From Chiswick Earn Ofcom Sanction

Regulator says that CGTN breached impartiality rules in coverage of HK protests

Police face protestors in Hong Kong. Picture: Studio Incendo

Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, has ruled that a number of programmes broadcast by CGTN, a Chinese state TV company, from their base in Chiswick Business Park are in breach of their rules.

They have found that five news programmes failed to meet the necessary standards of impartiality during items on the protests in Hong Kong from August to November last year. They described the issues as a ‘serious failure of compliance’.

CGTN is the English language operation of the China Media Group which is the Chinese state broadcaster. Four episodes of their current events show The World Today and one of China 24 were found to be worthy of sanction.

In their coverage of the protests against the Hong Kong Government’s Extradition Law Amendment Bill that would have allowed criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China for trial they consistently presented the views of supporters of the Hong Kong government and the Chinese government as fact and gave little or no perspective on the views of the protestors.

The report into the breaches states, “Ofcom considered these statements presented a one-sided perspective on the violence and other issues currently facing Hong Kong. This was maintained throughout the item as a whole and gave the impression that the protestors were solely responsible for the violence and disruption. There was no attempt to acknowledge or explore any alternative view at any point during the item, for example that the Hong Kong police may have played a part in escalating tensions with protestors or that violence may have occurred on both sides.”

Programming for The World Today and China 24 is jointly produced by CGTN’s Beijing operation and its regional production centre in Chiswick from where the channel broadcasts via satellite. The Licence for CGTN is in the UK is held by Star China Media Limited (SCML).

In response to a notification of the ruling by Ofcom, SCML said that they had found it difficult to get balancing comment from protestors who were suspicious of a Chinese state owned media and didn’t want to speak to reporters in Mandarin. They also said that the expectations of a UK audience would be different to that in China and that they were presenting a perspective that was not normally seen in western media.

They added that more serious sanctions had only been taken against broadcasters who had been found in breach a number of times and they cited the cases of TalkSport and Russia Today. The latter was fined £200,000 last July for lack of impartiality when covering the novichok poisonings in Salisbury.

The regulator has said that it is minded to penalise the broadcaster and one of the potential penalties is a loss of licence. This could have diplomatic ramifications with a possible retaliatory action against the BBC in China. CGTN has been given over 15 days to give a further response until the nature of the sanction is determined.

The channel has been banned from advertising on Twitter over similar concerns about its coverage of the protests in Hong Kong.

Ofcom previously received a complaint that the Beijing-controlled group aired forced confessions. An investigation was opened in May of last year after Peter Humphrey a British citizen claimed CGTN had aired a confession that he had made under duress.

Mr Humphrey had been working as an investigator on behalf of Glaxo Smith Kline in 2013 as part of an internal inquiry into claims of corruption at the company's operations in China. He was detained by the authorities along with his wife and accused of illegally obtaining the personal information of a Chinese individual. His detention lasted nearly two years.

This was not the first complaint against the broadcaster investigated by Ofcom. Lam Wing Kee, a bookseller from Hong Kong, and Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human rights activist, have both lodged complaints.

UK-based Angela Gui has also accused CGTN of broadcasting several public “confessions” made by her father, Gui Minhai.

An Ofcom investigation into Press TV, an Iranian news network, ended with its UK licence being revoked in 2012. The decision, along with a £100,000 fine, was imposed after the network had broadcast an interview with an imprisoned British journalist, Maziar Bahari. Ofcom concluded the interview had been conducted under duress.

CGTN are not responding to requests for comment.

May 31, 2020