Episode 48: Press TV Under Attack

First aired on 24 December

PressTV is under attack. Canada, the EU, the US, and the UK have all issued new sanctions on Press TV. Some have also sanctioned specific broadcasters from the station. Though spurious reasons are given for the sanctions, the reality is that the West fears that their lies about Iran will be exposed.

First Canada, sanctioned Press TV as an entity in October. Then the EU weighed in imposing sanctions on a number of individuals associated with Press TV, over alleged “forced confessions of detainees” following the recent US and Zionist backing of riots in the country. In reality, there have been no such broadcasts.

The sanctions, imposed by US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), target senior personnel of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and of English-language Press TV network, including senior journalists

OFAC also alleged that IRIB had broadcast “hundreds of forced confessions of Iranian, dual national, and international detainees in Iran.”

The West has been gunning for Press TV for many years. The UK broadcast regulator fined Press TV £100,000 in 2011 for broadcasting a short clip of the “confession” of Maziar Bahari a journalist who had been arrested as an alleged spy. Press TV's refusal to pay the fine for its license to broadcast in the UK, via satellite, was revoked in January 2012.

A key reason for targeting PressTV at the time was that it featured British dissidents like George Galloway and Ken Livingstone who were willing, to tell the truth about the British role in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and about the struggle of the Palestinians.

In 2014 Bahari created a new “citizen journalism” website called IranWire. Its website was designed by a UK company called Small Media, which is known to be a front for CIA media operations. Unsurprisingly US propaganda assets such as Masih Alinehjad have been prominently featured on the site.

In announcing the sanctions the US government also laughably accused PressTV of not being “objective”, of making “false and baseless accusations” and of being involved in “mass suppression and censorship”. But these are all qualities generously exhibited by both covert CIA propaganda operations and the mainstream US media. PressTV provides a counterweight to the Empire of Lies represented by Western media.

It’s no surprise that the US wants its propaganda assets in the region not to be challenged and targets PressTV as part of its ongoing regime change operation against the Islamic Republic.