Culture Secretary pays emotional tribute to journalists in Ukraine

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. She told MPs the audience for the BBC’s Russian language news website has “gone up from 3.1 million to 10.7 million in the last week”, adding: “Despite his best efforts to censor reporting in Russia, Putin’s own citizens are turning to factual, independent information in their millions. “At this point I’d just like to offer my heartfelt thanks and admiration to all of those journalists working for the BBC, the ITV and other news outlets who are risking their lives to bring us unbiased and accurate news from a live warzone.” Labour former minister Chris Bryant offered words of encouragement to Ms Dorries on the “tears she was pouring out over the journalists, Clive Myrie and people like that, who are doing an absolutely fabulous job”. Ms Dorries replied: “I think I just held the tears back, I’m a blubberer, as he knows.” Elsewhere, Ms Dorries praised the BBC as a “great British global brand” which needs protecting. Ms Dorries replied: “As someone who ran a school in Africa for years, and listened and waited every day for the World Service to hear those words, announcing that the World Service… first of all, it is funded through the Foreign Office, not through my department, and we have always, I have always said that the BBC is a great British global brand, and it needs protecting.