In case you are not yet aware, OfCom, Britain's Office of Communications, has decided to take Press TV off air in the UK this week. The significance of this move by the state regulator should not be underestimated. The battle for free speech is definitely on.
With this move, the state apparatus has all but declared war on a foreign network's ability to broadcast a political perspective that differs from the consensus reality line. Note that the state, particularly in the UK, will spend millions per year in order to enforce a rolling agenda of talking points. In the US, it will also spend billions to ensure the same thing.
Today London's Telegraph newspaper reported, “The foreign arm of the Iranian state broadcaster is to pull off the British airwaves after media regulator revoked its broadcasting license.”
Press TV, the channel which acts as the overseas mouthpiece of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government, has been told by Ofcom that it has breached broadcasting rules with interviewing a journalist who has been imprisoned in an Iranian jail and forced to read from a prepared script.
The ruling comes after a year-long investigation by Ofcom into the claims made by Maziar Bahari, a journalist for the US magazine, Newsweek, who was filmed by Press TV while being imprisoned in Tehran for nearly four months. He was arrested while covering the 2009 Iranian Presidential elections.
This latest victory for the censors is a move backwards for Britain, and it strikes deep into the heart of our free society- a society that generations have fought long and hard to arrive at. Support Press TV, support RT. If you really live in a free society, you should be able to watch and support any network that you choose to.
Have no doubt, the infowar is well and truly on.
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