The UK government under new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is expected to shelve plans to privatise Channel 4.

A publicly owned TV station created under Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1982, Channel 4 is financed by advertising and has traditionally focused on creating programming for underserved audiences.

The previous conservative government believed public ownership held the channel back from competing with streaming giants like Netflix; in April, the government led by Boris Johnson decided to go ahead with a sale. Channel 4 itself has opposed privatisation, believing that the public ownership model serves its needs better; some members of the ruling Coservative Party have also opposed selling the channel.

Now, the government under Sunak is reassessing the policies put in motion by his predecessors. As Financial Times reports, “[media] industry executives and some [members of Parliament] expect the privatisation will be among the many low-priority policies that will be scrapped by Sunak, as he focuses on stabilising the economy and unifying his own party”.

Time, the publisher of Time magazine, appointed Jessica Sibley as its chief executive officer. Sibley joins the company from Forbes, where she has worked as chief operating officer. Her tenure will begin on November 21. Before Forbes, she worked for several other media companies, including The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Condé Nast.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, the company has undergone a transformation in recent years. In 2018 the magazine was purchased by Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of the software company Salesforce, and his wife Lynne. “Under the Benioffs, Time shifted from a business focused mainly on print to other areas such as a film and television studio and an events business”, WSJ notes; though the print magazine retains 1.3 million subscribers.

Iran has been accused of plotting to kill two journalists working in the United Kingdom. 

“The Metropolitan Police [of London] have now formally notified both [British-Iranian] journalists that… threats [they received] represent an imminent, credible and significant risk to their lives and those of their families”, their employer Iran International said in a statement.

As BBC notes, the Farsi-language UK-based TV channel has been “among the main sources of news and information in a country where independent media and journalists are constantly persecuted” along with BBC Persian, particularly in light of recent mass protests in the country. 

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