The definition of an acceptable state stake should be zero if one is serious about protecting press freedom

‘We are fully upholding the need to safeguard our news media from foreign state control while recognising that news organisations must be able to raise vital funding,” said Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, alighting on 15% as the limit for foreign state ownership of a UK newspaper company .

She is obviously right that it is harder for companies to raise money if a pool of potential capital – state-controlled sovereign wealth funds and their like – are off-limits. No wonder some media owners lobbied for a percentage higher than the 5% that was being considered by the previous government as a tweak to last year’s legislation that set the cap at zero .