Reform UK’s top media presenter has worked for a Chinese state propaganda channel within the past year, the Guardian can reveal.
Ray Addison, who presents the political party’s in-house podcast and social media campaigns, fronted films about Xinjiang province – where the Chinese government is accused of committing genocide – for state media in September 2025.
In the videos, entitled Raymond’s Xinjiang Stories, some of which praise Chinese infrastructure, Addison described himself as a CGTN correspondent. The series was made after Addison left GB News in 2024, where he had worked as a news presenter and reporter.
Xinjiang province has attracted international attention because of alleged human rights abuses against the region’s Muslim Uyghur population by the Chinese state, including claims of forced labour, sterilisation, re-education and mass surveillance.
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Addison’s work for China contrasts with the hard line Reform has taken on Chinese issues ranging from industrial relations to suspected Chinese state espionage within Westminster.
In a social media video posted by GB News in January, Nigel Farage said of the UK’s relationship with China: “I’m very, very nervous about the extent to which China has effectively spied on us, stolen many of our industrial secrets. I’m worried about the extent to which they’ve infiltrated, using money, British universities. We must be cautious about the relationship.”
The videos presented by Addison for CGTN are publicly available on YouTube and carry a warning stating that “CGTN is funded in whole or in part by the Chinese government”.
CGTN lost its licence to broadcast in the UK in 2021 after the regulator Ofcom determined it was ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist party.
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Suella Braverman, [former Home Secretary and Conservative politician and] now a Reform MP, has also made public statements to this effect. On 14 January 2025, before she defected from the Conservative party to Reform, she posted on X: “China is committing genocide in Xinjiang, funding Putin’s war of aggression in Europe and has committed acts of cyber-terrorism against the British people.”
Addison is paid by Reform to produce content about the party and creates social media videos as well as presenting its The Reform UK Podcast. In recent days he has fronted the party’s social media promotion of its conference, which is being held in Birmingham.
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Propaganda is inherently false, because it is produced in bad faith aiming to distort reality.
You constantly re-post articles critical of China. I’m sure you view this as some kind of valiant truth telling exercise regardless of the article’s source, and not spreading blatant and obvious anti-China propaganda?
Rules for thee and not for me!
See, that idea is itself misinformation. Propaganda is not a synonym for 'lies", and some of the most effective propaganda has been made in good faith while employing the unvarnished truth. Propaganda is more of a function than an entity, the act of consciously or unconsciously extolling a certain worldview. Not only is our “news” media propaganda but all the shows, movies, books and games we consumed growing up all serve a secondary propaganda function. There’s a reason the Department of War was so interested in funding those transformers movies back in the late 2000s. Propaganda is so much more varied, complex and interesting than simply “lies”.
You know better than linguists I suppose.