<\/p>\n
As London emerges as the unofficial capital for Persian media outside Tehran, threats abound and so do breaking stories.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Last month, seven armored response vehicles filled the streets of a sleepy London suburb after the Metropolitan Police informed Iran International TV (IITV) of \u201ca credible and significant\u201d threat against two of its journalists. The seriousness of the intelligence prompted U.K. foreign minister James Cleverly to summon Iran\u2019s most senior diplomat to the Foreign Office. The conversation wasn\u2019t made public, but the outraged pronouncements of British officials afterwards suggested the U.K. government didn\u2019t take kindly to the intimidation of journalists by a foreign power on its patch.<\/p>\n These days, the 24 hour Persian, non-regime satellite channel IITV broadcasts from behind a fence and a three-meter high concrete barriers, which can stop a seven-and-a-half ton truck at 60 miles an hour. No cars are allowed into the vicinity; metal detectors, armored response vehicles and police protect the site. Private security guards control entrances. My name was on a list, and the young man who escorted me to the offices of Volant Media, IITV\u2019s parent company, came from the garrison town of Aldershot, which suggested a private security firm with access to freelance British squaddies (GIs).<\/p>\n Upstairs Adam Baillie, a news producer who helped set up the channel in 2017, explained that the two threatened journalists, still unnamed, are now under police protection. \u201cThere\u2019s low-level harassment against families inside Iran \u2013 that\u2019s a given,\u201d he explained, \u201cThe IRG (Islamic Revolutionary Guard) commander-in-chief Hossein Salami said, \u2018We\u2019re coming for you.\u2019 They\u2019ve had us under surveillance. Given the opportunity, presumably they would strike.\u201d<\/p>\n The Revolutionary Guards aren\u2019t the only ones watching IITV, and the other Farsi-language TV channels and news websites, including BBC Persian, Manoto TV and IranWire \u2014\u00ad all based in London, which has emerged as an important hub for the Persian press outside of Tehran. Since September 16th this year, when nationwide protests erupted in Iran after the beating and death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, increasing numbers of viewers and website users inside the country have deserted state-controlled media to seek news and information elsewhere.<\/p>\n Threats in the past and present, veiled or otherwise, color the experience of Persian-speaking journalists in London. Many take precautions as a matter of course. Some BBC Persian personnel keep their place of work secret. At Manoto TV, phone and email messages go unanswered. The 2009 detainment, arrest and subsequent release of former Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari at IranWire are well documented. Along with Voice of America (VOA) Farsi in Washington D.C. and Radio Farda, part of Radio Free Europe\/Liberty Radio service, in Prague, the international Persian-language media outlets, which beam into Iran, pose an existential threat to the Iranian regime. The government\u2019s pushback is an indication of how seriously Tehran takes the information war for the hearts and minds of ordinary Iranians.<\/p>\n A woman broadcast journalist who fled the country last month requested anonymity before speaking with me. \u201cIranians have more trust in a video or photo they see published on Instagram or Twitter than any media related to the government,\u201d she said, \u201cand they tend to search for news in other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n She was also keen to stress that none of the Persian news networks have correspondents or reporters inside Iran. They too are reliant on the news Iranians at home post on their Instagram accounts.<\/p>\n IITV\u2019s Baillie agrees. The channel relies on UGC (User Generated Content) in addition to the informal connections of the channel\u2019s 350-strong staff inside the country, and their reporters living outside. The channel also broadcasts from Washington D.C., with journalists covering the U.N. in New York and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in Vienna. \u201cOur mission is not to foment revolution, or pick and choose stories that are uncomfortable for the authorities in Iran. As an independent news channel, we mirror back to Iran what\u2019s happening in Iran, and Iran-related, international stories.\u201d<\/p>\n On Saturday morning, few seats are empty in front of the array of computer monitors on rows upon row of long tables, which fill an open-planned newsroom. Screens on the walls broadcast IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting). At one end is a television studio. Somber, in black, anchor Parisa Sadeghi prepares to go on air. She sits in front of a larger-than-life still image of women protestors holding each other\u2019s hands in the air.<\/p>\n Recently news inside Iran\u2019s corridors of power has been coming from Black Reward, the Iranian hackers\u2019 group, which introduced itself on Telegram in October with a spectacular treasure trove of documentation from the country\u2019s nuclear agency. In October, the group sent an SMS message to five million Iranians, calling them out onto the streets.<\/p>\n Baillie said nobody at the channel knows them. However, the group is a professional outfit and not made up of \u201cteenage activists.\u201d Because of the channel\u2019s popularity inside Iran, IITV has become the hackers\u2019 \u201cfirst port of call\u201d and, he stresses, \u201cthat\u2019s not at our behest.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month, the group released an audio file of a meeting between the Basij commander and IRG\u2019s General Salami, and a treasure trove of archival material from the regime\u2019s propaganda arm, Fars News Agency. Dubbed \u201cFarsgate\u201d at IITV, the hacked emails revealed the pressure Iran brought to bear on Qatar during the World Cup to cancel the official FIFA accreditation of the channel\u2019s sport reports, which barred them from the event.<\/p>\n The Iranians also reminded the Qataris that the border with Iran was only forty miles away, and if the channel\u2019s reporters did come, they might be persuaded to \u201cprolong their stay\u201d in the region \u2013 i.e. be kidnapped.<\/p>\n Before the Netherlands\/U.S.A match, Baillie introduced me to a roomful of IITV sports reporters. When I asked if they were upset not covering the World Cup, one cried out, \u201cBetter to be alive!\u201d<\/p>\n IITV has 11 million followers on Instagram, and features stories that don\u2019t find a home on family-oriented channels like Manoto, which means \u201cYou and me\u201d in Persian, and has been known to broadcast lengthy documentaries on the Shah\u2019s wife, Empress Farah. The different audiences of Persian media outlets are reminiscent of the division between the sensationalist New York Post<\/em> and the more traditional New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n The hackers collective Black Reward leaked security camera footage inside a Fars News Agency office. An editor locked his office door, smoked cigarettes and ate potato chips while surfing the net and jacking off. The footage went viral. It was one of the most read stories trending among readers of its English-language website, which closely mirrors its Persian site.<\/p>\n This channel and the other Persian media organizations are not inexpensive propositions and the sources of their funding have made them vulnerable to criticism. The British Foreign Office funds BBC Persian, as does the U.S. government for VOA Farsi and Radio Farda. A British Saudi businessman funds IITV, which was accused by the Guardian<\/em> of having ties to the kingdom\u2019s effective ruler, Mohammed bin Salman \u2013 allegations that were strenuously denied by the channel.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no editorial interference,\u201d shrugged Baillie, \u201cNo hotline between us and anyone else.\u201d To prove his point, he turned to the channel\u2019s coverage of the murdered Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi. IITV broadcast the first interview with Agnes Callamard, the U.N. Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. \u201cIf anyone was pulling our editorial strings, they\u2019d make us cover the story in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n Breaking the News<\/strong><\/p>\n A New York Times\u2019<\/em> story<\/a> on the shutting down of Iran\u2019s Morality Police \u2013 responsible for policing Iranian women \u2013 by Middle East bureau chief Vivian Yee and Farnaz Fassini, on December 4th, suggested the regime had made a concession to the protests. But Iranians on Twitter and Middle Eastern news outlets criticized the analysis. The next day the New York Times<\/em> backtracked by publishing another article explaining why \u201cthe concession\u201d might be a red herring. The newspaper\u2019s coverage of Iran was a lesson on how not<\/em> to be stooge for the regime at a time when women protestors are being shot in the face and genitals<\/a>.<\/p>\n The website IranWire breaks important stories by forensically dissecting events inside the country, finding and checking sources and understanding the regime\u2019s modus operandi<\/em>. The platform\u2019s work has not gone unnoticed. Last month, the Washington Post<\/em> called it \u201can essential player using technological savvy and internet sleuthing.\u201d<\/p>\n IranWire\u2019s Aida Ghajar was the first reporter to write about Mahsa Amini\u2019s death after seeing tweets from initially unnamed and then named sources, both inside and outside the country. The trail Ghajar followed led to Mahsa Amini\u2019s brother, who brother told Ghajar: \u201c\u2018I have nothing to lose. Please use my name in the report.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n This story so outraged the Intelligence Organization of the IRGC and the Intelligence Ministry, two women journalists who had no connection with IranWire other than they were covering the story in Iran were arrested. The jailing of Niloofar Hamedi from Shargh<\/em> newspaper and Elaheh Mohammadi from Ham Mihan<\/em> prompted IranWire to post: \u201cHow Did IranWire Publish the First Report about Mahsa Amini.\u201d<\/p>\n In it Ghajar revealed the extent of her reporting, while IranWire\u2019s Persian editor Shima Shahrabi shed light on the website\u2019s verification process. One of Shahrab\u2019s contacts was a \u201cformer police employee who still maintains special relations with the police \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n IranWire\u2019s editor-in-chief Maziar Bahari was also quoted in the piece: \u201cFor the safety of professional journalists in Iran we never contact them. However, we are in contact with many citizen journalists, and they help us in our reporting, including when we report on breaking news.\u201d<\/p>\n Bahari and I have known each other since the late 1990s. The launch for the anthology we coedited together, Transit Tehran<\/em>, took place during his 118 days in solitary confinement, in Evin Prison. After his release, he started IranWire in 2013, which publishes in six different languages \u2013 the main ones being Persian and English, alongside Kurdish, Azari, Arabic and Spanish. The platform has a reach of 70 million people, with 90 per cent of its readership inside Iran. Some 65 per cent are between the ages 18 and 35.<\/p>\n Since Mahsa Amini\u2019s death, IranWire has experienced a 225 per cent increase in users, with approximately 200 million monthly online impressions \u2013 whenever a user follows through and clicks on a website.<\/p>\n Other than reporting, professional journalists at IranWire have another raison d’\u00eatre<\/em>. They act as mentors for citizen journalists inside the country. Bahari explained, \u201cIt\u2019s mentorship about storytelling: character development and context. Even news pieces have to be a character-based story. So basically, you\u2019re asking people to tell a story when they send in an article or news piece or a video.\u201d<\/p>\n IranWire places a strong emphasis on human rights. \u201cWe try to be correct and accurate, but at the same time we don\u2019t pretend to be neutral,\u201d maintained Bahari. \u201cWe are very pro-human rights. We also think about our articles, videos, any of our content, as advocacy tools for activists. So when activists want to raise the issue of, for example, the killing of children in Iran, we want to do a report that activists can use. It\u2019s always in the back of our minds. We have that mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n Mandates differ in the Persian media outlets in the West. BBC Persian, the best-known foreign media brand in Iran, has 13.8M people on average each week across TV, radio and digital platforms, and prides itself on impartiality, a stance explained on Twitter, in Persian and English. \u201cOut sole aim is to report the truth about Iran in an independent and impartial way \u2026\u201d Yet, in the current climate some Iranians prefer that a side be taken \u2013 understandably against the regime.<\/p>\n For Bahari, the impartiality of BBC Persian shows their \u201cprofessionalism.\u201d More importantly, the ongoing protests have strengthened the links between inside and outside the country.<\/p>\n He explained, \u201cIt\u2019s a two-way connection. We\u2019re inspired by what the people are doing [there] and how they get information and use websites to communicate with each other and the rest of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n But connectivity relies on access, and the Iran government has been adept at slowing down internet accessibility. As Bahari outlined, \u201cInternet censorship happens on several different levels of Iran. They narrow the bandwidth, so people have slow connections. Sometimes they cut the national internet so people don\u2019t have access to sites that require a cloud like Google, Twitter or YouTube etc. Sometimes the national internet connection is shut down. So even government offices and ministries cannot communicate with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n The level of control depends on the unrest. In Kurdistan in the country\u2019s northwest, for instance, when intense fighting has been taking place, the government closed phone lines. The Kurds, however, still had access to a signal from Iraq, on the other side of the border.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dodgy VPNs<\/strong><\/p>\n Hooman Askary, the senior social media producer at Radio Farda \u2013 which means \u201ctomorrow\u201d in Persian \u2013 monitors internet speeds and disruptions in Iran. Farda is one of 27 language services that Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty broadcasts to 23 countries that stifle press freedoms. By blocking access to Instagram, the Iranian government impedes communication between its citizens inside the country and slows down dissent.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the mobile phone of the typical, middle-class Iranian you would find all sorts of messaging applications,\u201d said Askary, \u201cJust in case one of them doesn\u2019t work, they try another one.\u201d<\/p>\n To keep communicating, Iranians download VPN (virtual private networks), which they switch between. Askary cited former Iranian president Ahmadinejad. \u201cHe was asked about the internet filtering in Iran and laughingly he said, \u2018The Internet is not filtered in Iran because those who block and filter Internet sell anti-filtering software themselves.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n VPNs have become a lucrative business in Iran. \u201cIf you don\u2019t get your VPN from a trustworthy source,\u201d Askary noted, \u201cyou are not able to tell as common Internet user that your data is safe and is not being sent elsewhere using your very own Internet connection.\u201d<\/p>\n He recalled a tactic of the government\u2019s during the cost of living demonstrations that took place in December 2017. After Telegram was blocked, a few versions of Telegram emerged on the Internet. Through an application called \u201cGolden Telegram,\u201d a user could access all the material from Telegram but only through the filtering, monitoring and surveillance of the intelligence organizations.<\/p>\n Again, Black Reward provided real insight into the thinking of the Islamic Republic. Askary translated into English one of their hacked bulletins, which he sent to his colleagues at Radio Farda that morning.<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to the result of a recent survey by the Ministry of Interior, 25 per cent of people inside Iran get their news and information from the state television and radio; 24.6 per cent receive their information vis-\u00e0-vis from the news of social media; 16.4 per cent from satellite channels; 11.1 per cent from their friends and 6.4 per cent from websites and other news media.\u201d<\/p>\n He went on to say, \u201cThey have not mentioned the remaining percentages, but the figures are quite significant. They are in effect admitting that the number of people who receive their news from state television \u2013 with all the budget [and] funding [that goes into a] huge network all around the country \u2013 is almost the same number for Iranians who receive their news from social media \u2013 and this is according to the very sources of the Islamic Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n He drew an analogy between Iran now and the Arab Spring. Egypt\u2019s was called the Twitter Revolution. Even though the country\u2019s literary rates were not high, the people who accessed Twitter were the ones who influenced their family members, peers and social groups. \u201cSo you have to remember this 25 per cent in Iran who receive their news from social media are mostly the young generation, the educated. Each one has a social network around them. The actual percentage of Iranians influenced by social media should be much higher\u201d than statistics provided by the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n Iranians on the street have made no secret that they have been let down by their state media. One of the slogans shouted during the demonstrations has been: \u201cOur shame, our shame \u2013 state television and radio.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of those who watch Iran from afar believe the current protests are different from those that have come before. Bahari, from IranWire, called them \u201cthe most seminal in the past four decades,\u201d while Radio Farda\u2019s Askary wondered out loud if the smaller demonstrations, which took place in the country over the past five years \u2013 of retirees, factory and oil workers, students, among many others \u2013 were just a warm-up to the unrest taking place now.<\/p>\n He asked, \u201cUnwittingly, did the Islamic Republic teach and train people in mastering the art of protest?\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking from Prague, he told another story. \u201cAt the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini famously said, \u2018My soldiers right now are in cribs,\u2019 referring to the children who were born just after the revolution. Those very children turned into us. We did not manage to topple the regime. Many of us left the country. Many of us died. Many of us are being crushed inside Iran under the pressures of daily life.<\/p>\n \u201cBut this new generation,\u201d Askary concluded, with an ominous tone in his voice, \u201cthey didn\u2019t turn into his foot soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Malu Halasa reports on the myriad ways Iranians circumvent Iran’s heavy-handed media to get their news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":21201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,45,50],"tags":[867,884,900,1075,1231,1404,1435],"article-category":[],"article-type":[],"coauthors":[2023],"class_list":["post-11971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-article","category-tmr-27-freedom","category-tmr-issues","tag-iran","tag-iranwire","tag-islamic-republic-of-iran","tag-mahsa-amini","tag-news","tag-protest","tag-radio-farda"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMalu Halasa<\/h4>\n