Australian broadcaster suspends China’s CGTN

Fri, March 5, 2021, 6:44 AM

Australian broadcaster SBS said it was suspending the broadcast of Chinese TV news services CGTN and CCTV after receiving a human rights complaint. Emer McCarthy reports.

Video Transcript

– Australian broadcaster SBS said it was suspending the broadcast of Chinese TV news services CGTN and CCTV after receiving a human rights complaint. An SBS spokesman told Reuters that programs would not air on Saturday, and that SBS was reviewing a complaint from a human rights organization.

A 15-minute English news service and 30-minute CCTV Mandarin language service had been part of SBS programming. A story on the SBS News website said human rights organizations Safeguard Defenders wrote to SBS after Britain’s media regulator revoked the license of CGTN due to serious non-compliance offenses.

SBS reported the letter from Safeguard Defenders as saying the CCTV broadcasts involved the extraction, packaging, and airing of forced and false confessions of prisoners held under conditions of duress and torture. China’s foreign ministry in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. SBS is a public service broadcaster providing news and entertainment programming on radio and television in multiple languages with a focus on multicultural issues.