UK revokes license of Russian state-funded TV channel RT
By Team Newsable | First Published Mar 18, 2022, 3:49 PM ISTThe watchdog said RT’s parent body ANO TV Novosti was not “fit and proper to hold a UK broadcast licence”.
Britain’s media regulator on Friday revoked Russian-backed television channel RT’s licence to broadcast in the UK with immediate effect after a probe into the impartiality of its coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The watchdog said RT’s parent body ANO TV Novosti was not “fit and proper to hold a UK broadcast licence”. RT’s coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been under investigation by Ofcom, and the channel had already disappeared from UK screens.
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“Freedom of expression is something we guard fiercely in this country, and the bar for action on broadcasters is rightly set very high. Following an independent regulatory process, we have today found that RT is not fit and proper to hold a licence in the UK,” Ofcom Chief Executive Dame Melanie Dawes said.
RT is currently off air in Britain due to sanctions brought on by the European Union since Moscow’s invasion late last month.
Although the UK is no longer in the EU, the bloc applied sanctions to satellite companies in Luxembourg and France, which provided the RT feed to Sky, Freesat and Freeview in the UK.
In recent weeks, Ofcom has launched 29 investigations into the “due impartiality of RT’s news and current affairs coverage” of the invasion of Ukraine.
RT responded by saying the regulator had shown itself to be nothing more than a tool of the British government.
RT’s deputy editor, Anna Belkina, said Ofcom's decision to suspend the broadcaster’s UK licence has “robbed” the British public of access to information.
In a statement, she said: “Ofcom has shown the UK public, and the regulatory community internationally, that, despite a well-constructed facade of independence, it is nothing more than a tool of government, bending to its media-suppressing will.”
“By ignoring RT’s completely clean record of four consecutive years and stating purely political reasons tied directly to the situation in Ukraine and yet completely unassociated to RT’s operations, structure, management or editorial output, Ofcom has falsely judged RT to not be 'fit and proper' and in doing so robbed the UK public of access to information.”
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