Press TV

NOTE: This page was made for, and is being imported from, Terrible Shows and Episodes Wiki.

Press TV
It's simply depressing that a government backed network that can spew ZOG conspiracies..
Genre: News Running Time: 24 hours a day Country: Iran Release Date: 8th July, 2007 - present Created by: Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Distributed by: Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting

Press TV is an international news network run by IRIB, which is the Iranian government's central TV agency. They're the English, and the French language feeds, with their Spanish sister channel being Hispan TV and their Arabic-language channel being Al-Alam. They started broadcasting on July 2nd, 2007, and are meant to compete with other big news channels, such as BBC and Al-Jazeera.

Disclaimer

While this is not a good source of news and shouldn't be used as your first-hand account, it is still important to watch this at times. Remember that one should consider all sides of an argument before forming their political opinion, and reading different sources to see/hear what they're saying will help you.

We also do not want to use this page to promote the interests of the US, Israel, or any other targets of this network

Why It's Relentlessly Terrible

1. It's run by the Iranian government, which is already a massive red flag. The channel's parent company, IRIB (owned by Iran's government), is the only legal broadcaster in Iran, and censorship runs rampant as a result.
2. They constantly push an agenda that will be overtly anti-Saudi, anti-American, pro-Iranian, and pro-Yemeni. Not only that, but they're brazen about it, hammering the idea that Iran is this glorious place that's a victim to the rest of the world.
3. One of these incidents includes the infamous 9/11 conspiracy theory that the attack was secretly an inside job infiltrated by neocons and Israel.
4. Most infamously of all, they are shockingly anti-Semitic. They continuously use terms like "the Israeli regime", and not only that, but they also repeatedly target Zionists (Jewish nationalists). Some of these claims include:
   • The Jews were harvesting the organs of Algerian children.
   • Zionists are waging war through the media (this was purported in an interview with far-right figurehead David Duke)
   • The Jews of Israel were responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attack.
   • Israel was responsible for COVID-19 and that Zionists were creating a new strain targeted against Iran.
5. This has even branched out into denying the Holocaust on two occasions.
   • On International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2008, they called the genocide "the greatest lie ever told" in an editorial.
   • They claimed that Auschwitz was a recreational center where Jews could enjoy cultural activities.
6. In relation to the above, Press TV is completely one-sided in its support for Palestine in the war against Israel. While supporting Palestine isn't a bad thing in and of itself, they take it too far in several instances.
   • They are known supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas, which are both far-right, anti-Semitic, and Islamic nationalist and fundamentalist political parties with close ties to Iran. They are designated as terrorist groups by nations such as the USA and the UK because of their military wings.
   • Their terminology is consistently aligned with Hamas, such as calling their infamous October 7th attack "al-Aqsa Flood" and calling Palestinian victims of Israel's Gaza invasion martyrs.
7. Another particular favorite target of theirs to attack is Canada, most often making various false claims attributing to a false narrative of authorities targeting First Nations people in the modern day.
8. They have conducted interviews with very sketchy figures, like David Duke (as stated above).
9. When the US government seized their former domain, they set up a new website to evade the seizure using a loophole, which can sound like an inability to take criticism.
   • However, it's not as black-and-white as other websites evading bans, as this was forceful from a government, and not just an ISP blocking them.
10. According to former anchor Sheena Shirani, the work environment was certainly toxic. She said that she was sexually harassed, and had a phone call published, which got the two managers suspended.
11. Production values are shockingly low when considering the background of the channel. In their newscasts, there are often many cases of dead air for several seconds and several basic text-to-speech voices are used, making it hard to take them seriously.

The Only Redeeming Quality

1. Their logo is quite clever, resembling both an eye in stills and a radar in broadcasts.

Reception

Press TV have received international condemnation from various parties. Nick Cohen, a British journalist, said that the channel is "a platform for the full fascist conspiracy theory of supernatural Jewish power." The US right-wing newspaper The Washington Examiner said that "If you like crackpot conspiracy theories or you’re interested in what the Iranian government wants you to believe, then pay a visit to Press TV!”

The channel has been banned in several countries. Due to coverage of the 2010 Qur'an bombing, it was banned in the former Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir. They were also banned by the UK for violating several Ofcom rules in 2012. In 2021, as stated in WIS#8, their website (formerly presstv.com) was seized by the US government, though they circumvented this by setting up a new domain. The new address used the .ir domain, the national domain of Iran, rather than the .com domain, because if the US government seized that, it would be a violation of national sovereignty. As of 2023, Press TV is on the USA's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list, which targets terrorists or groups complicit in terrorism. This blocks them from obtaining any assets in the country, although their website isn't blocked. Google has blocked them from using Gmail and YouTube, which by extension blocks them from distributing their app on the Google Play Store. As such, they have instead moved to Rumble and Odysee, both YouTube competitors with an infamously (far) right-wing userbase, and their Android app has to be downloaded directly from the website.

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