Eutelsat wages war to silence Iran media: Danny Schechter

Eutelsat wages war to silence Iran media: Danny Schechter
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/28/291306/eutelsat-attacks-free-speech-again/
Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:17PM GMT

An analyst says the orchestrated attack to silence the Iranian point of view is a big-brother punishment to all who understand the necessity for diverse viewpoints.

In the background of this Israeli-owned satellite network Eutelsat continues its media attack against Iran and has ordered Iran’s Arabic channel al-Alam off air as it continues it’s anti-free speech attack to silence points of view coming out of Iran in its efforts to only have people of the world access a one-side-of-the-story point of view. The attack must be sanctioned by the EU and Western governments that preach free speech and human rights, but act out in an opposite manner.

Press TV has interviewed Danny Schechter, political analyst and Editor of MediaChannel.org in South Africa about this issue. The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Iranian media is being banned on certain satellite outfits. I’d like to get your thoughts at this point?

Schechter: I think it’s ironic coming just a few days after the Academy Awards that honored a movie that is critical of Iran and that is an invented story in large part about Iran - a propaganda exercise in my opinion, which won an Academy Award - “Argo”. The voices of people critical of Iran could be heard worldwide.

Now, Iran is being shut off from access to the world basically perpetuating a one-sided communication strategy. I’m not so sure that its just this one guy who runs this operation whether he is Israeli or French, I don’t know that he himself has the power to do this without approval by other members of his company or by the United States.

Clearly there’s an orchestrated strategy here it’s something that is very disturbing because if they can silence Iran today, they can silence other people tomorrow. And this is what we’re seeing is a pattern of manipulated communication, which is very frightening when it comes to the need for people to be able to hear each others’ points of view and listen to each others’ analysis and perspectives.

If you only have one voice then what you have is big brother speaking to us and not the diversity of views that exists in the world and they will bring us any closer to solving our problems if we can’t listen to each other and we can’t even hear each other’s point of view.

Press TV: What is the real goal of this orchestrated campaign specifically when it comes to Iranian media?

Schechter: Well it seems to be consistent with the whole sanctions idea to try to make it very difficult for the Iranian government to function in the world both in the economic front and on the communications front, to use all of these tactics to penalize Iran and of course they’re targeting one country. They’re not targeting other countries that are engaging in human rights abuses and other problems.

It’s a selective campaign, it’s orchestrated clearly, we don’t know by who and I think it’s a challenge to the media in the world to start looking into this and investigating this. This shouldn’t be a story that only Press TV reports as if Press TV is self interested - No!

This should be a story that al-Jazeera, that all the American networks, that the BBC and that others look into and investigate because there is a pattern here that really needs to be exposed.

Press TV: Going forward then what do you believe... you spoke about other media outlets maybe being targeted as well or this setting a precedent at least for how the United States and Israel etc may act out in the future.

Do you believe others are getting this message or do you think others have not realized what is happening here?

Schechter: I’m here in South Africa working on a film - I’m a film director and I haven’t been able to investigate this story or put in the amount of time and effort that’s needed to do so, so I can’t really answer specific questions about who did what to whom. But needless to say those questions need to be asked and answered.

This should not simply be a problem for Iran, this should be a problem for everyone who believes in free communications in the world and the right of different nations to have access to the world communications media.

This is not just a kind of a way to sanction or punish Iran, they are actually punishing all of us - all the listeners all the viewers who are looking for diverse points of view and who are interested in knowing what the Iranian government says and what it’s doing.

SC/JR