By Hamid Reza Emadi: As a Press TV senior producer back then in 2009, when the post-election unrest gripped the Iranian capital, I was faced with a unique opportunity to cover some hot news from the motherland. The more I covered the post-election unrest, the more I learned about the difficulties of reporting on our own problems rather than on others’. Today, I take pride, as a journalist, in the fact that we did our best to cover what came to be as facts and not what eventually turned out to be hearsay, sabotages, unsubstantiated reports or fantasies. I admit that there were flaws in the coverage, too. But generally we covered a political earthquake in Iran from Tehran, what I never imagined that would even be possible. Since then, I have paid close attention to the rolling coverage of protests in Western capitals, though of totally different nature, by the Western media. And I have seen very little.
In 2011, London protests were gruesomely censored by the BBC and the CNN, making Press TV a dominant voice for the protesters, many of whom had never heard of the Iranian channel. Our journalists and cameras were everywhere as our rolling coverage machine was in full swing. As a result of the magnificent coverage, the British media regulatory body, Ofcom, took Press TV off the air. I and the then CEO of Press TV were placed under punitive measures, i.e. EU sanctions. In a letter, Catherine Ashton of Britain, the then EU foreign policy chief, called me a human rights violator. She accused me of the most ungodly crimes possible, making sure that I would stay on the sanctions list even when she herself is gone. And I knew it very well that I was paying the price.
When the one-percenters’ uprising was being crushed by the police force in the United States, Press TV’s cameras and reporters were at the scene, covering a story largely ignored by the mainstream media. We showed the arrests, the beatings and the pepper sprays on live television. We interviewed people inside their protest tent cities, what their own media refused to do. Press TV was never given a license to broadcast or even work in the US and we had to hire people through media agencies. But despite our little resources, we became a major source of news reflecting on the demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement. We are still being censored in the US, just like in the EU and elsewhere across the Western world, but we keep going strong.
Come the last day of 2014, we have grown older, developed our own technologies and become more professional. And as the world is dealing with the growing threats of Western-created extremism, the United States is witnessing a new wave of protests sparked by the killing of black teenagers by white officers. The protests are not just about the killings, they are about, among other thorny issues, the injustice that follows each and every murder. In a country with a black president, white officers who kill black teens get away with it with the help of the US justice system that’s ironically also run by an African American man. And we cover the story—even better than before.
The greatest issue is not the protest movement itself, it is the mentality. People have realized that they can challenge the American establishment through the means of public protests. The size and magnitude of those protests are incomparable to any other in America’s modern history. And the public awakening among the mostly deprived black population is tremendous. African Americans are asking questions. Why are we targeted? Why are our sons getting killed? Why are the killers not even tried? Where’s justice? And we relay their message to the world. Press TV is covering the African Americans’ grievances on a round-the-clock basis. And yet again some people aren’t so happy. There are those who claim to be part and parcel of the global anti-imperialist camp, but have little interest in efforts to highlight the suffering of human beings back at their homes. They simply do not care how many black kids are shot dead or judged by the color of their skin, and not, as Dr. King once said, the content of their character. They do not care how many Palestinian children die in Gaza or in the occupied territories. They hate Zionists just because of Zionism’s links with Judaism, not because of the fact that Zionists are blood-thirsty oppressors that can hardly be called human beings.
We have come under pressure by those elements because of our extensive coverage of the protests in the US. They want us to change course. But did we change course when we came under pressure from some of the world’s most powerful powers? Did we stop telling the truth about the UK royal family or America’s crimes? Did we cave in when the Zionist lobby took us off the air throughout Europe for covering Israel’s wars on women and children in Gaza?
The fact that elements within the CIA campaign of misinformation, the ones who tie world problems to aliens and secret weapons, are putting pressure on us not to cover the black uprising is very telling. That shows the depth of the black movement. The Asians and Hispanics could join the movement if members of their community are targeted as well and that becomes news on alternative media like Press TV, putting America in an unprecedented domestic trouble — a crisis that given the record number of weapons at ordinary people’s disposal could lead to an armed confrontation between people and the establishment.
The black community’s protests have the potential to put an end to America as we know it. Perhaps, that is the main reason why the US has provided its police force with tanks and other heavy weaponry. And, as we learned from the Iraq war, when the US media and military were technically one and the same, the mainstream media censorship will intensify as soon as those black kids start shouting louder — when we at Press TV will keep you posted.
Hamid Reza Emadi is a Tehran-based journalist and political commentator. He worked as a newspaper journalist for ten years before joining broadcast media in 2006. He has appeared in numerous TV programs talking about media freedoms, US-sponsored sanctions against the Iranian nation, Iran’s nuclear file and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
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In 2011, London protests were gruesomely censored by the BBC and the CNN, making Press TV a dominant voice for the protesters, many of whom had never heard of the Iranian channel. Our journalists and cameras were everywhere as our rolling coverage machine was in full swing. As a result of the magnificent coverage, the British media regulatory body, Ofcom, took Press TV off the air. I and the then CEO of Press TV were placed under punitive measures, i.e. EU sanctions. In a letter, Catherine Ashton of Britain, the then EU foreign policy chief, called me a human rights violator. She accused me of the most ungodly crimes possible, making sure that I would stay on the sanctions list even when she herself is gone. And I knew it very well that I was paying the price.When the one-percenters’ uprising was being crushed by the police force in the United States, Press TV’s cameras and reporters were at the scene, covering a story largely ignored by the mainstream media. We showed the arrests, the beatings and the pepper sprays on live television. We interviewed people inside their protest tent cities, what their own media refused to do. Press TV was never given a license to broadcast or even work in the US and we had to hire people through media agencies. But despite our little resources, we became a major source of news reflecting on the demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement. We are still being censored in the US, just like in the EU and elsewhere across the Western world, but we keep going strong.
Come the last day of 2014, we have grown older, developed our own technologies and become more professional. And as the world is dealing with the growing threats of Western-created extremism, the United States is witnessing a new wave of protests sparked by the killing of black teenagers by white officers. The protests are not just about the killings, they are about, among other thorny issues, the injustice that follows each and every murder. In a country with a black president, white officers who kill black teens get away with it with the help of the US justice system that’s ironically also run by an African American man. And we cover the story—even better than before.
The greatest issue is not the protest movement itself, it is the mentality. People have realized that they can challenge the American establishment through the means of public protests. The size and magnitude of those protests are incomparable to any other in America’s modern history. And the public awakening among the mostly deprived black population is tremendous. African Americans are asking questions. Why are we targeted? Why are our sons getting killed? Why are the killers not even tried? Where’s justice? And we relay their message to the world. Press TV is covering the African Americans’ grievances on a round-the-clock basis. And yet again some people aren’t so happy. There are those who claim to be part and parcel of the global anti-imperialist camp, but have little interest in efforts to highlight the suffering of human beings back at their homes. They simply do not care how many black kids are shot dead or judged by the color of their skin, and not, as Dr. King once said, the content of their character. They do not care how many Palestinian children die in Gaza or in the occupied territories. They hate Zionists just because of Zionism’s links with Judaism, not because of the fact that Zionists are blood-thirsty oppressors that can hardly be called human beings.
We have come under pressure by those elements because of our extensive coverage of the protests in the US. They want us to change course. But did we change course when we came under pressure from some of the world’s most powerful powers? Did we stop telling the truth about the UK royal family or America’s crimes? Did we cave in when the Zionist lobby took us off the air throughout Europe for covering Israel’s wars on women and children in Gaza?
The fact that elements within the CIA campaign of misinformation, the ones who tie world problems to aliens and secret weapons, are putting pressure on us not to cover the black uprising is very telling. That shows the depth of the black movement. The Asians and Hispanics could join the movement if members of their community are targeted as well and that becomes news on alternative media like Press TV, putting America in an unprecedented domestic trouble — a crisis that given the record number of weapons at ordinary people’s disposal could lead to an armed confrontation between people and the establishment.
The black community’s protests have the potential to put an end to America as we know it. Perhaps, that is the main reason why the US has provided its police force with tanks and other heavy weaponry. And, as we learned from the Iraq war, when the US media and military were technically one and the same, the mainstream media censorship will intensify as soon as those black kids start shouting louder — when we at Press TV will keep you posted.
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