The Church of England has justified its criticism of News Corporation's attempt to take full control of British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) with the claim that “we have a mission to the nation”. The statement was made to the Financial Times newspaper.
The Church said that it was defending “a wide plurality of media, as being one the key building blocks of a healthy society”, seeming not to recognise the contradiction between this and its own feudal privileges. The Church appoints its own legislators to sit in parliament, bishops who have no accountability to the people. One of its legislators, Bishop Michael McCulloch, was able to exert undemocratic influence of over broadcasting policy as a member of a parliamentary committee on communications between 2007 and 2010.
The Church of England invested in BSkyB until 1995 when the company started to broadcast Playboy TV in Britain.