Listen: Jenrick warns of foreign state media ownership

Will a UAE-backed entity buy the Telegraph and The Spectator? Not if parliament gets its way. More than 100 MPs have signed a letter saying that this should not happen, demanding a veto on foreign states taking over British titles. Former Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick, who organised the letter, told this morning’s Today programme:

We believe that freedom of the press is a fundamental bulwark of democracy, and it is therefore very important that we protect our major national newspapers and media outlets from inappropriate control by foreign powers.

Jenrick says that he and his colleagues are proposing that, alongside the existing powers that the government has, there should be a vote in parliament on whether these types of takeovers can happen as and when the circumstances arise. ‘This provides an additional check as a bulwark to freedom of the press,’ he told presenters.

When asked why parliamentarians were only getting concerned now about foreign ownership of media, given there is a precedent for this, Jenrick made the distinction been foreign ownership by and individual and ‘a foreign power’, adding: ‘That is a step that we’ve never taken as a country, nor has any other democracy anywhere else in the world, and I think that would be deeply concerning.’

And pressed on whether he believes that this would be a ‘state takeover, whatever Jeff Zucker and anyone else says’, Jenrick told the BBC that while he didn’t think ‘one could know with any certainty exactly what would happen and how much influence might creep into these particular newspapers…freedom of the press matters, public trust and confidence in the press matters…and that would be undermined if we went down this road.’

Listen to the full conversation here: