The Office of Communications (Ofcom), the UK broadcasting regulatory agency, said PressTV had violated its licensing requirement by claiming falsely that it was edited in London when it was really edited in Tehran.
PressTV responded that the license revocation was politically motivated because it criticized the royal family and British government actions against street protesters. It called the license revocation censorship.
The license revocation won’t shutter the television station. While it has lost the one satellite outlet to which it uplinked in Britain, it will retain three other satellite links as well as be available over the Internet.
PressTV, a 24-hour news channel, is the English-language service of Iranian state broadcasting. It was removed from Sky TV’s satellite platform Friday as a result of the revocation.
The story led PressTV’s news bulletins where its reporter said the move appeared politically motivated, aimed at silencing a broadcaster that had focused in part on the failings of British domestic and foreign policy.
“Ofcom cannot claim that it is not a part of the British government … and it acts exactly in line with the policies of the British government. Otherwise, it would not be possible to prevent an international network and an alternative voice in Britain,” PressTV’s newsroom director Hamid-Reza Emadi told state television in Tehran.
George Galloway, a former member of the British parliament who hosts a talk show on the channel, called PressTV a “voice for the voiceless…. This is a blow for PressTV,… but it is more of a blow to the British government’s hypocritical stance of being in favor of freedom of expression,” he said.
Ofcom, which is accountable to parliament, rejected the claim it was acting on behalf of the British government. “Ofcom’s decisions are made independently in accordance with its statutory powers and duties under the Communications Act 2003,” a spokeswoman for the regulator said.
The roots of the Ofcom decision lie in a ruling last month to fine PressTV £100,000 ($155,000) for broadcasting an interview with an imprisoned Newsweek journalist, Maziar Bahari, who said the interview was a coerced confession.
Emadi scoffed at that, saying PressTV did not believe the confession was coerced. Besides, he said, PressTV only aired a 10-second clip.
Emadi said, “PressTV believes that Ofcom is the media tool of the British government.” He did not address the issue of whether PressTV is the media tool of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Ofcom said it emerged during the Bahari interview investigation that editorial control of PressTV was exercised from Tehran rather than London and the broadcaster had failed to amend its license accordingly.
PressTV was given a license on the basis that it was run out of London. Foreign media groups can hold UK broadcast licenses but must be open about where editorial control is based.
Ofcom said it wrote PressTV in November and said the station could either shift editorial control to London or change its broadcasting license to show that editorial control lay in Tehran.
“Broadcasting rules require that a license is held by the person who is in general control of the TV service—that is, the person who chooses the programs to be shown in the service and organizes the program schedule,” Ofcom said. “Ofcom gave PressTV the opportunity to apply to have its operations in Tehran correctly licensed by Ofcom and Ofcom offered to assist it to do so.” But Ofcom said PressTV did neither.
Ofcom also said PressTV had not paid the £100,000 fine assessed for the Bahari interview.
The Foreign Office said, “We have been concerned for some time by serious allegations about PressTV, in particular that it has been involved in broadcasting confessions obtained under duress.
“It is right and proper that these allegations should have been investigated by Ofcom, as the independent regulator of the UK media. Ofcom is independent of the government. The government was not involved in this decision.”
In Tehran, state television’s all-news channel reported that Ofcom had cancelled PressTV’s license “due to PressTV’s revelations about the corruption of Britain’s royal family.”