The uniform theme is that Europeans are the ultimate hypocrites because they ban Iranian broadcasts while claiming to support freedom of expression.
The news reports published in Iran do not, however, tell Iranian readers that the Hot Bird ban is a response to years of Iranian jamming of Western broadcasts that use Hot Bird to broadcast into Iran.
The main broadcasts that were and are jammed by Iran are from BBC Persian, the Voice of America Persian broadcast and Radio Farda.
The charge of European opposition to freedom of expression thus falls a bit hollow.
The Iranian reports portray the Hot Bird ban as a European plot against Iran. PressTV, one of the broadcasters knocked off Hot Bird, said, “The illegal move by Eutelsat is a step to silence all alternative news outlets representing the voice of the voiceless.”
PressTV said Eutelsat reported that it acted in compliance with new EU sanctions. But PressTV then contacted the EU and reported the EU said it had no such sanctions on broadcasts. PressTV portrayed that as confusion in the ranks of the nasty Europeans who didn’t know how to explain what they are doing.
However, Eutelsat never said it was knocking Iran off Hot Bird on the orders of the EU. Eutelsat said it made the decision to take Iranian stations off Hot Bird on its own.
But Eutelsat’s announcement was anything but clear. It said the French broadcasting authority had decided in 2005 that Iran’s Sahar 1 channel should be switched off Hot Bird. “As a French company, Eutelsat is bound to comply with instructions from the French broadcasting authority,” Eutelsat said—without explaining why it waited seven years to comply!
A statement issued by a group of unnamed Iranian journalists also lambasted the Hot Bird decision. There is no doubt, the statement said, that the blackout stemmed from the Islamophobia of “arrogant” powers as the banned Iranian channels always provided an “appealing and reasonable” image of Islam.
The blacked out television stations are PressTV in English, Al-Alam and Al-Kawthar in Arabic and six Farsi-language stations: Jam-e Jam 1 and 2, Sahar 1 and 2, QoranTV and the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network. The channels can still be seen in Iran where the broadcasts reach viewers over the air. The satellite broadcasts are for viewers abroad.