Television: Russia
(asked on 1st March 2022) - View Source
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to ban Russian state-backed television channels.
Answered by
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
As the Secretary of State set out in her statement to the House of Commons on 3 March 2022, Vladimir Putin must not be allowed to exploit our open and free media to spread poisonous propaganda into British homes.
I am pleased to say that RT has already been removed from Sky, Freeview and Freesat in the UK, meaning that Putin cannot push out his propaganda on UK television. I also welcome Ofcom’s announcement of 27 investigations into RT, and their confirmation that they are considering RT’s UK broadcasting licence.
The Secretary of State has written to the major platforms, asking them to do everything they can to prevent access to RT online in the UK, as they have done in Europe, and we are glad that YouTube and Meta have already done so.