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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.
IRAN’S ENGLISH SATELLITE CHANNEL DEBUTS, FURTHER CROWDING COMPETITION FOR COVETED AMERICAN VIEWERS
JUL 3, 2007 - 11:11AM PDT
Posted by Alvin Snyder
All posts by this author
Iran is the latest entry in the international satellite news channel sweepstakes. Its 24-hour English service, "Press TV," debuted July 2. It is funded by the Iranian government, and one supposes by each of us when we gas up our cars. But Press TV is sharing attention today with a planned Middle East "Adult" channel, which is said to be in the works.
Here we are mixing English, Arabic, and adult international channels, our rationale being that each offering, no matter what the language or fare, competes for a limited "share" of viewers as a given time.
Let’s first examine the English-language fad in international satellite news broadcasting.
Like its predecessors, Press TV is meant to provide ”News from another point of view,” from Tehran and its bureaus in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East -- including Damascus and Beirut -- to counter not only broadcasts from Western media, but from others such as "Palestine and Beirut," according to Press TV’s program chief, Nadar Rad.
On its inaugural day Press TV covered an appeal by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to military commanders in Afghanistan to end civilian casualties, an update on U.S. military casualties in Iraq, the death of an accused Egyptian said to have been an Israeli spy, and a story that US troops in Iraq are no longer intimidating to the population.
Press TV says its staff numbers more than 400, and includes British and American broadcasters. The Tehran operation fashions itself to be more objective than the Qatari Al Jazeera channel, which Rad claimed supported former Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein and the Taliban.
A member of the Association for Press Freedom in Iran is taking issue with this.
Interviewed on America's Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Isa Saharkhiz said that because of Iran's press censorship, the new channel will likely be "ignoring some news and exaggerating other unimportant news," which would make it difficult for the channel to find an audience in the West.
Because satellite dishes that are capable of receiving Press TV and news channels from other counties are banned in Iran, Tehran’s new English channel can be expected to be virtually unseen in its home country.
Iran’s Press TV is the latest in a string of English satellite news channels: France’s news channel, patterned in the CNN mold; China’s CCTV’s English channel; Russia Today’s English channel; Al Jazeera’s English channel, and so on.
The lone international news channel with any measurable audience in America is the BBC’s World News, carried on prestigious public television stations in the U.S.
Elsewhere, Adam Clayton Powell, a TV aficionado who roams the world as Vice Provost for Globalization for the University of Southern California, kindly keeps us abreast of which English channels are showing up where on TV screens. He reports to us that:
"Jon Stewart on CNN when I was in Singapore a month ago.”
But a channel that could trump TV satire and the rest is the proposed adult channel previously mentioned. Worldcasting was tipped "that Lebanese artist Jad Choueri is planning to launch an Arabic channel that will air steamy scenes currently censored in music videos, shows and movies.” Choueri is said to already received death threats. The story on Mediame.com reportedly generated some 500 comments.
Tehran's English channel, Press TV, may have to compete for attention with more than CNN and the pack of international news channels striving for Western audiences.
Read Comments (4) | Add Your Own
 Read Comments:
Addendum: on July 4, 2007 @ 1:57 pm:
Early, continuing monitoring reports detailing the editorial direction of Iran’s new English satellite TV channel, “Press TV,” suggest once again that objectivity is in the eyes of the beholder. While Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the channel, that debuted July 2, as a counter to Western propaganda, a Press TV report contained some propaganda of its own, namely that the recent terrorist attacks in Glasgow and London were staged by Britain “to discredit Muslims,” according to a monitoring report of Press TV published by The Guardian.
The Guardian also discloses that one of Press TV’s program interviewers is Yvonne Ridley, a former London Sunday Express journalist who converted to Islam after being kidnapped by the Taliban in 2001.”
BBC Monitoring reports that Ridley’s first program in her series, “Agenda,” examined “Why does Pakistan spend more on the military than on health and education.” Steve Metcalf of BBC Monitoring quotes President Ahmadinejad as saying Press TV’s mission is to “always stand by the oppressed of the world.” Another program, “Middle East Today,” addressed the work of female peace activists in Lebanon, Iraq, and the “Palestinian territories,” and the program “Four Corners,” examined chemical warfare issues in the Iraq-Iran war, including an interview with a University of Minnesota professor of anthropology, according to BBC Monitoring.
-Alvin Snyder
Joe on July 16, 2007 @ 2:04 pm:
Here's how to watch AlJazeera, Press TV, France 24 and Russia Today in the United States and Canada via Satellite for Free.
http://tyros.leb.net/satellite
Jesus Alberto Cabal on August 6, 2007 @ 4:06 pm:
Hello friends!
I want to invite all your readers to visit the web page: http://www.usa-terror.com which deals with the worst violation of human rights ever committed by Federal Officials within the United States of America.
Thank you all.
NADARAJAN on August 22, 2007 @ 7:45 am:
PLEASE HELP ME SUBSCRIBE
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