Press TV

Press TV's news bulletins often feature Iranian ministers, diplomats or government officials, or guest commentators that are able to express views consistent with the Iranian government's "message of the day."[23][24][25]

In a post-election "information offensive," reports the Associated Press, Press TV and Al-Alam have "churned out a blitz of policy statements, negotiating points and news breaks as the main soapboxes for Iran's public diplomacy."[26]

In 2007, the Canadian weekly Maclean's, while observing that "most of Press TV's news reports are factually accurate," alleged that Press TV also publishes "intentional errors," citing a story on the Press TV website that contained the claim, based on "no evidence," that the Lebanese government is trying to convert the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp into an American military base."[27]

In July 2009, Dominic Lawson, a columnist for The Sunday Times of London, criticized Press TV for giving a forum to Holocaust deniers and British journalists and politicians for appearing on Press TV. Lawson said they are "being paid to lend credibility to the propaganda arm of a regime that subjects its own journalists to the most brutal 'political interference.'"[28]

In August 2009, Ofcom, the British broadcasting regulator, judged that two phone-in shows hosted by George Galloway on Press TV had broken its broadcasting code on impartiality in their coverage of the Gaza War by not including enough calls from pro-Israelis. Press TV said contributions to the show reflected the balance of opinion.[29]

Press TV was accused in 2011 by British journalist Nick Cohen of functioning as "a platform for the full fascist conspiracy theory of supernatural Jewish power".[30] Oliver Kamm in The Jewish Chronicle in 2009, of having an "ability to insinuate into public debate the worst and most pernicious ideas around", including Holocaust denial.[31]

In a September 15, 2009 article entitled "Incendiary Press Reporting," Moroccan journalist Hassan Masiky criticized Press TV for trafficking in "fiction and fantasy" by circulating a suspect story about "an alleged Jewish gang trading in “body parts” and abduction of Algerian children towards Morocco."[32]

In a May 2011 article reprinted on the website of Press TV, correspondent Mark Dankof, who is also a contributor to the conspiracy-oriented[33][34] American Free Press, wrote an article about how the prediction of antisemitic Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is "only partially true", and lauded Press TV as "one of the 'few exceptions'" to the Lobby's control of the media.[35]

In 2012, a report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) alleged that Press TV has broadcast what the ADL described as examples of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and opinions.[36] The report says Press TV for interviewing individuals such as the American conspiracy theorist David Duke who said on the station that Israel was involved in 9/11 and of the Iraq War, he said: "The Zionists orchestrated and created this war in the media, the government, and international finance".[37] The ADL reported in 2013 that in another appearance, Duke made "anti-Semitic allegations that are consistent with his record and typical of the views often espoused on Press TV".[38] Mark Dankof has also backed claims on Press TV that 9/11 was an "Israeli Mossad inside operation from start to finish".[37]

In early 2015, the station claimed Jews or Israel were responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.[39] A January 20, 2015 article by Kevin Barrett on the station's website falsely claimed the 2011 attacks in Norway and that "the Zionists created ISIL".[36]

On the subject of International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), an editorial on the Press TV website in 2008 noted, "On this anniversary, we all need to mull over the faking of history and the Greatest Lie Ever Told."[40] In 2008, The Jerusalem Post[41] and the British Searchlight magazine[42] criticized Press TV for reprinting on its website an article entitled "The Walls of Auschwitz: A Review of the Chemical Studies" by the British Holocaust denier Nicholas Kollerstrom which was first published by the denial group, the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH).[43] The document claims that the Auschwitz gas chambers were used for "benign" purposes only and said "the alleged massacre of Jewish people by gassing during World War II was scientifically impossible".[41] Press TV described Kollerstrom, by then removed as an honorary fellow of University College London (UCL) because of the article,[43] as a "distinguished academic".[44] A 2014 article on the website, the Canadian writer Brandon Martinez described Auschwitz as having been an appealing place where Jews were able to participate in "cultural and leisure activities". He rejected the existence of gas chambers during the Holocaust and the use of Zyklon B for the mass killings of European Jews. To make his assertions he drew on claims made by Holocaust deniers Mark Webber and David Irving.[45]

In November 2013, the Press TV website reprinted an opinion piece in its 'Viewpoints' section, first written by M.I. Bhat for Veterans Today, although Bhat was a regular columnist for Press TV as well.[46] The article blamed Jews for their fate in the Holocaust and accepted "the Nazi regime’s anti-Jewish conspiracy theories as historical fact". Bhat queried whether American Jews were "incubating another Hitler".[46]

Following the severing of diplomatic relations between Canada and Iran in September 2012, Press TV began to devote more attention to Canada.

In December 2012, Press TV aired a report entitled "Alberta takes aboriginal kids from parents at high rate" in which Joshua Blakeney, Press TV's Calgary correspondent, claimed that Alberta's child protective services were engaged in the human trafficking of First Nations children. Blakeney stated that "Some upset parents allege that there is a profit motive behind what they refer to as Canada's so-called child protective services" and asserted that an anti-terrorism squad, called INSET, was responsible for the abductions.[47][48][49][50][51]

One of the veiled women interviewed in the report (who was not identified) claimed that her "aboriginal children" were taken by a squad of 32 police officers." Another woman interviewed stated that "It definitely is a money-making scheme, because a lot of native children have been sold into adoption, but it is also used as an assimilation program [and] a genocidal program." The report also showed written messages of "Help me! Now!!", which were allegedly written by abducted children.[47]

The allegations in the report were immediately denied by Government officials and Native leaders. Cindy Blackstock, an associate professor at the University of Alberta and executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada denied the report was true, stating that "The factors driving aboriginal children into care have been well-known for 15 years; it's poverty, poor housing and substance abuse. ... The federal government provides significantly less funding on reserves than for all other Canadians ... but I have never in my life heard of any military undertones to this."[47]

Blakeney has also claimed in reports published or broadcast by Press TV, that the appearance of Canada's new $20 bill was evidence that Canada “remained an imperialist nation” and that "90% of Canadian youth felt stressed about careers." Blakeney subsequently claimed that his reports for Press TV are “defiantly illuminating the skeletons in Canada’s closet.”[52]

Another report made several charges against the Canadian government, including:

• Secret plans to "steal indigenous children";
• "Ignorance of the First Nation land rights";
• Jailing refugees without cause; and
• using excessive force to suppress student protests.

Another program interviewed Alfred Lambremont Webre, who was described as an "international lawyer" based in Vancouver. Webre stated Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an "out and out Zionist" who is engaging in the "same repressive policies within Canada that Israel follows within its own territories against the Palestinian people." Webre then described a conspiracy between Vancouver police and serial killer Robert Pickton "to commit ritual Satanic murders with high-ranking politicians." Finally, Webre claimed that the Queen of England abducted 10 Aboriginal children in 1964. Concluding his comments, Webre described Canada as "the ultimate Zionist state under the British Crown and under Israel."[52][53]

In response, Paul Heinbecker, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and a distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation at the University of Waterloo, has stated that Press TV is highlighting Canada's First Nations in order to "negate" Canadian reports of human rights allegations against Iran. Heinbecker stated that "The human rights situations in the two countries are scarcely comparable ... but our own very real shortcomings on Aboriginal issues ... are fodder for the Iranian efforts."[52] Iranian native Payam Akhavan, a professor of international law at McGill University, stated that "Canada's diplomatic posture has elevated its ranking in the regime's demonology charts."[52] Ed Corrigan, an immigration lawyer and former councillor for London, Ontario, is a regular guest on Press TV. Corrigan, who has boasted that "There's very few people in Canada who have more expertise on Middle East politics than I do," argues that Press TV is demonstrating the "international opinion" of Canada's treatment of its native peoples, explaining that "We tend to forget about our conquest of North America ... but most countries in the world see it as a colonial exercise."[52]

Nick Ferrari, a British radio presenter on LBC, resigned from his show on Press TV on 30 June 2009, following the response of the country's authorities to protests over the disputed Iranian presidential election. Ferrari told The Times that Press TV's news coverage had been "reasonably fair" until the election—but was not any longer.[54] Ferrari admitted joining Press TV "was one of the dimmest career decisions of my life", although he also said he had not been pressurized to adhere to any particular line.[55]

In August 2009, Tariq Ramadan, host of Islam and Life on Press TV, was dismissed from his position as a guest professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, after the university's board decided that his "indirect relationship with a repressive regime" was unacceptable.[56] In a 2017 edition of his programme, Ramadan hosted an Iranian analyst who made sympathetic comments concerning President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and said the Arab Spring was a "project put forward by neo-con Zionists". Ramadan was reported not to have countered these assertions.[57]

In September 2009, The Times reported that Hassan Abdulrahman, born David Theodore Belfield, one of the chief editors of the Press TV website from the beginning of Press TV's news department, had stated that he left Press TV as chief online editor in July 2009 after the election in protest at its skewed coverage of that event.[58][59][60] The Times quoted Abdulrahman as saying, "No, I don't think Press TV is about [real journalism]. By its nature, state journalism is not journalism. They have some programmes on there that might be, but generally it's not."[58][59] In the article the Times also reported that Abdulrahman, who has also used the alias Dawud Salahuddin, is wanted by the FBI for shooting dead Ali Akbar Tabatabai, a former press attache at the pre-revolutionary Iranian embassy in Washington, in 1980. The Iranian government provided money and airfare to Tehran to Belfield after he allegedly committed the killing.

Sheena Shirani who worked for Press TV from 2007 to January 2016, said news director Hamid Reza Emadi and studio manager Payam Afshar have been sexually harassing her for years, publishing a recorded phone conversation with her boss Emadi. Press TV suspended both managers following the incident.[61]

In June 2010, Channel 4, the British broadcaster, transmitted a programme featuring Maziar Bahari, a documentary maker and Newsweek contributor, who was arrested while covering the Iranian presidential election in 2009, and held in custody for 118 days. He alleged that a Press TV 10 second interview and 'confession' had been preceded by torture, and was given under the threat of execution.[76] Bahari, now a British resident, complained to Ofcom, the regulatory authority for the telecommunication industries in the United Kingdom.[76] In July 2009, Dominic Lawson, a columnist for The Sunday Times of London, had criticized Press TV for broadcasting the "confession...without a scintilla of skepticism."[28]

In May 2011, Ofcom ruled that Press TV was responsible for a serious breach of UK broadcasting rules by airing the 10 second interview with Maziar Bahari, accepting that it had been obtained under duress while he was held in a Tehran jail.[77] Press TV rejected Ofcom's findings and accused Bahari of being "an MI6 contact person".[78] A fine of £100,000 ($155,000 in January 2012) was eventually imposed in November 2011, reversing an initial decision to revoke Press TV's licence.[64] Press TV responded: "The British royal family exercises an overarching power over all branches in the political system of the [UK], including the government and the parliament, as well as on Ofcom."[64] At the beginning of December, The Observer journalist Nick Cohen called for Ofcom to revoke the station's broadcast licence, not only because behaviour towards Maziar Bahari, but in addition:

"If whites ran Press TV, one would have no difficulty in saying it was a neo-Nazi network. It welcomes British Holocaust-deniers such as Nicholas Kollerstrom, fascist ideologues such as Peter Rushton, the leader of the White Nationalist party – an organisation that disproves the notion that the only thing further to the right of the BNP is the wall ..."[30]

On 20 January 2012, Press TV's licence to broadcast in the UK was revoked by Ofcom.[79][80] The investigation into the Bahari case had revealed the applying company's direct connection to Tehran, and that editorial control came from there. An invitation to change this in the licence had not been taken up by Press TV.[81] The unpaid fine was not the reason why Ofcom ended Press TV's licence.[82]

Geoffrey Alderman, the British historian and occasional Press TV contributor, attacked the Ofcom decision, and called for it to be reversed. He described the action by Ofcom as "thoroughly deplorable as well as palpably cynical".[65] Defenders of Press TV, including Alderman and the broadcaster's legal representative, Farooq Bajwa,[66] have referred to a formerly secret American diplomatic cable dated 4 February 2010. Later released by WikiLeaks, it says the British Government was at time "exploring ways to limit the operations of the IRIB's Press TV service". This 'exploration' was in response to the jamming by the Iranian government of broadcasts by the BBC Persian Service and the Voice of America, also mentioned in the document[67] and mentioned by Alderman.