Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has said that Channel 4 News has not done itself “any favours” in terms of impartiality.
Dorries confirmed her plans to privatise the publicly owned, free-to-air broadcaster, saying, “It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee, Channel 4 is being sold.” Any sale would still be subject to (at least one) parliamentary vote.
Dorries also branded the BBC’s licence fee as ‘unfair’ and restated her wish to abolish it.
Despite alluding to a bias in the Channel’s new programme and calling it “edgy”, Dorries rejected claims she was seeking vengeance against the channel by selling it as, “laughable.”
“It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee Channel 4 is being sold” – Nadine Dorries
From I’m A Celebrity to Culture Secretary, watch a profile of Nadine Dorries here: https://t.co/3DtQ7PkNVb pic.twitter.com/GODShsIWIe
— The New Statesman (@NewStatesman) May 19, 2022
Yet she said it had not done any favours, citing reports that recently retired, longtime C4 newsreader Jon Snow shouted ‘F*** the Tories’ at Glastonbury in 2017. Dorries added she would not “justify a news organisation whose anchor went out to shout obscenities at Tories.”
On BBC, Britain’s other and most famous public owned broadcaster, Dorries said a BBC funding review would start before Parliament’s summer recess at the end of July.
The Culture Secretary announced she was looking for an independent chair to lead that review, and her role would be “completely hands-off.” When asked if she wanted to abolish the licence fee, Ms Dorries replied: “Yes, the licence fee is an unfair way of funding the BBC.”
Conservative MP Damian Green asked the minister if, considering she had already made up her mind in regard to the licence fee, the funding review would inevitably be “a sham”. Ms Dorries insisted otherwise, saying it was “time for a modern, fair way of funding the BBC – what that is, I don’t have an opinion.”
