[On] 22 July, the House of Lords will hold a consequential vote on whether to allow up to 15 percent foreign ownership of domestic media, in a long-standing debate that poses potential consequences for information integrity in the UK.
At the heart of the issue is whether to allow the American investment firm RedBird Capital to proceed with its plan to purchase the parent company overseeing the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph and its global distribution. ARTICLE 19 is deeply concerned about the risks posed to media pluralism, transparency, and information integrity by this proposed relaxation of foreign ownership limits without robust safeguards. We note that RedBird Capital’s close ties to China, including through its chairman, John L Thornton, raise risks of Chinese information influence in UK media and globally.
[…]
We recall that a group of MPs and peers expressed, in a letter sent to [British Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport] Lisa Nandy in early June, concerns in this case stem from ‘the lack of transparency regarding the source of the funds behind this acquisition,’ making it ‘conceivable, and increasingly likely, that funds could be sourced directly or indirectly from foreign state actors,’ including China. This risk arises from the close relationship of RedBird Capital chairman, John L Thornton, to China, as argued in the letter.
Thornton’s connections to China are manifold, as outlined in a recent article for Index on Censorship by Luke Pulford, Executive Director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). Thornton sits on the International Advisory Council of the China Investment Corporation, China’s largest sovereign wealth fund, and chaired the Silk Road Finance Corporation, both vehicles through which China has pursued financial influence. Bloomberg has also reported his ‘solid Chinese connections’, including positions on the boards of the semi-state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China Unicom Hong Kong, a subsidiary of the State-owned telecommunications operator, which was barred from doing business in the US in 2022 over national security risks. He has also served in advisory roles for the Confucius Institute, which the Henry Jackson Society and the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation identified in a 2022 report as a direct extension of the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department in the UK. #
[…]
Grerkol@leminal.space 5 days ago
This article is so strange to me. Do these guys want “media plurality” and “freedom of expression and information” or to stop people with links to China from owning UK news outlets? On the one hand they’re talking about this ideal of freedom of press and on another it’s about how we need to restrict who can control the press. “Information integrity” sounds like justification for censorship to me.
It’s so full of vague, conflicting ideals.
The idea of laws about transparency of ownership and funding seems reasonable I suppose. It’s good media literacy to find out what you can about who owns and funds a news outlet. That’s why I looked into who’s behind this “Article 19” organisation.
www.article19.org/financials/
Ah… The UK and US governments, along with the infamous “National Endowment for Democracy”. Seems it’s bad when China tries to control the narrative, but not the UK or US.
As for whether I personally think this US firm that has some links to China should be allowed to buy the Telegraph, I don’t care much either way, as long as I can access the media I want to and look up who owns it. It does seem like they’re trying to set a precedent for blocking foreign outlets they don’t like though.
Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org 5 days ago
Ah, #foundatankie.