Press TV (stylised PRESSTV) is a 24-hour English language news and documentary network, affiliated with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). IRIB is state-owned but independent of the Iranian government in its management; the IRIB is a legal TV and radio broadcaster inside Iran. Press TV is headquartered in Tehran, Iran, but has offices and bureaus around the world, inlcuding in London, Beirut, Damascus, Kabul, and the Gaza Strip. Press TV began broadcasting HDTV on the Hot Bird satellite cluster since 13 January, 2014. The network's slogan is "News Anew".
The BBC journalist Linda Pressly has described Press TV as pro-Palestinian, anti-sanctions against Iran, and... critical of Western foreign policy.
LOL
We can't have that now, can we?
In July 2013 Press TV and other Iranian channels were removed from several European and American satellites (amongst others those of Eutelsat and Intelsat), allegedly because of the Iran sanctions, even though a EU spokesman told the channel that these sanctions do not apply to media. In November 2012, the Hong Kong-based AsiaSat took Iranian channels off air in East Asia, and in October 2012 Eutelsat and Intelsat stopped broadcasting several Iranian satellite channels, though the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting managed to resume broadcasts after striking deals with smaller companies based in other countries.
Anyway, this is their website: http://www.presstv.ir/
And this is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's speech in Damascus, dated 7.26.2015, they recently published:
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/07/26/421935/Syria-PreAssad-ISIS-UN
Is Press TV's take on the world ethnocentric? Is it biased? Is Bashar al-Assad's account of the events in the region slanted?
Undoubtedly so.
Is it propaganda?
Of course, it is.
How much so?
It depends.
It would depend, I suppose, on what one's definition and understanding of terms such as "ethnocentrism," "bias," "slanted," and "propaganda" are. And to what degree one think such terms might apply to our own media, like, say, Fox News, CNN, NBC, or, God forbid, BBC America.
Call me a stickler for the credo of pluralism and world-mindedness, but it does seem to me that people in this country, in Europe and in the Americas, ought to be free to listen to any media news channel they wish and exert their own judgement, without a third party deciding for them what they ought to watch or not watch and banning what said party deems inappropriate. Because anything less, would be… Well, it would be anti-American, now, wouldn't it? And against everything the people who founded this great nation of ours fought for.
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