Iran’s Press TV & the British ‘Enemy Within’

By keeptonyblairforpm

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On PRESS TV: Sarkozy insists Iran must free French academic - she is “NOT a spy”

Comment at end

7th July, 2009

NAMED – BRITISH EMPLOYEES/SYMPATHISERS OF THE PRESENT IRANIAN GOVERNMENT

THE ENEMY WITHIN?

PRESENTERS ON PRESS TV

GEORGE GALLOWAY - a British Member of Parliament and head of the RESPECT party.

YVONNE RIDLEY - former Al Jazeera and Sunday Express journalist.

ANDREW GILLIGAN - The Evening Standard columnist, best known for his 2003 report about a British government briefing paper on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction (the September Dossier) while working for BBC Radio 4’s The Today Programme as its defence and diplomatic correspondent.

NICK FERRARI – UNTIL LAST WEEK WHEN HE HAD THE SENSE TO RESIGN. (Why he was persuaded to join them in the first place concerns me.)

TARIQ RAMADAN, A SWISS citizen but WELL KNOWN IN BRITAIN TOO

Also listed as an employee – Afshin Rattansi, the award-winning former BBC journalist and novelist, and Guardian columnist. He launched the Dubai Business Channel, and worked in senior positions at Al Jazeera, Bloomberg and CNN International.

And then there’s THE MOST (IN)FAMOUS OF THE LOT, LAUREN BOOTH. She is a half-sister to Cherie Booth, the wife of Tony Blair, who is now the Quartet’s Middle East envoy. She is probably the most highly-connected Briton to work for the present Iranian government and must have felt like a major coup to Amanutjob… Ahmadinejad.

Lauren Booth, with head scarf, as she appears on Press TV

Lauren Booth speaks: How her Press TV programme is too important to her to stop doing it. AND here, her sad childhood. Is this why she has rejected her own country and culture and perhaps some of her own family?

Wikipedia- Lauren Booth - “Currently Lauren presents ‘In Focus’ on the UK’s Islam Channel, and ‘Between The Headlines’ on the Iranian-owned Press TV.^[3] ^[4]“

^{Press TV says it has over 50 correspondents in London, New York, Washington, Beirut, Damascus, Beijing, Moscow, and several other European capitals, as well as four correspondents covering the Israel-Palestine conflict from Gaza, Ramallah and Jerusalem.}

Press TV was made available on the Sky package from December 2008, but its programmes are already available on Arabic packages, as well as its website (www.presstv.com).

BACKGROUND TO THE BROADCASTING ISSUES IN IRAN, BRITAIN & THE WORLD

As Iran performs on many fronts following unrest after its disputed election returned Ahmadinejad to office, the President of Iran has challenged Obama to a debate. Iran has also charged the last of nine arrested Iranians who worked for the British Embassy with acting against Iran’s security. It is struggling as valiantly as its lies will permit to pass the blame to the west, especially Britain, for its people’s unrest after the recent elections. Meanwhile a conservative Iranian newspaper suggests that the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi should be charged with treason.

It is suggested that one of the reasons local diplomats in the British Embassy in Iran were arrested had something to do with the BBC’s Persian TV Channel, although the autorities have said they may have been fomenting unrest. The Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad took exception to the BBC Persian channel’s kind of “news” getting out to the Iranian people.

Meanwhile, back in Britain we have been hosting THEIR kind of news since January this year. In London, in fact under the less clearly identifiable definable name of “Press TV”. Doesn’t sound quite as Iranian as the BBC Persian Channel sounds British.

But of course the enemy within uses this kind of tactic. It’s called subterfuge, and we have plenty of the homegrown type here in Britain.

The BBC’s newest satellite TV channel has gone on air, a Farsi language service for viewers mainly in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

BBC Persian TV will broadcast for eight hours a day, seven days a week, in peak viewing time in those countries. The head of BBC World Service, Nigel Chapman, says millions of Iranians have dishes and there is plenty of demand. But Iranian officials have branded the channel a “security threat” and say they will take “necessary” steps.

The BBC has been broadcasting in Farsi on the radio since 1940 and it launched BBCPersian.com in 2001. The radio has a weekly audience of 10 million people and the BBC hopes that the television service will reach the same figure within three years.

Correspondents say despite the efforts of the government in Tehran, the BBC has a high reputation as a reliable news provider among Iranians.

Although the government has banned Farsi-language operations, it does allow the BBC to base an English-language correspondent in the country. But the authorities have warned citizens not to get involved with the new TV channel, and the BBC has advised viewers not to risk getting themselves into trouble in order to take part in phone-ins and other interactive broadcasts.

As part of the BBC World Service, the new channel is funded by the UK Foreign Office at an annual cost of £15m ($22m) but it is editorially independent of the government. Ten days after first broadcasting Iran blocked the BBC’s Persian website.

From The Times, July 1, 2009

Presenter Nick Ferrari quits Iran Press TV over ‘bias’ after election

By Martin Fletcher

Nick Ferrari, a leading British radio presenter, quit his show on the station yesterday in protest at the regime crushing dissent after the Iranian elections, but Press TV continues to employ plenty of other Britons — including MPs and Cherie Blair’s half-sister.

It operates freely in this country, even as foreign journalists are ejected from Iran. It advertises on London buses.

The regime set up Press TV two years ago to break the “stranglehold” of the Western media — and its coverage of the election and the aftermath has certainly been different.

POINTS FROM NEWSNIGHT, 1st JULY, 2009

1. Offcom is investigating PRESS TV for accuracy and due impartiality.

2. Press TV is situated near the North Circular road in North London, off the Hangar Lane gyratory system.

3. It was set up two years ago ny the current Iran regime as the Voice of Tehran in order to challenge western broadcasting and views.

4. Nick Ferrari, the London radio host quit Press TV over the suppression of dissent and because BBC reporting was airbrushed out. He says he cannot reconcile that behaviour with working there.

5. Matthew Richardson, executive of what he described as ‘Press TV Limited’ defended Press TV.

6. Jeremy Paxman asked him why the first information of the shot young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, was over a week late on Press TV. No satisfactory answer came from Richardson. Another ”enemy within.”

Watch the Newsnight programme from 1st July, 2009