Britannia Radio

BY HARRY UNDERWOOD

FIRST POSTED JULY 1, 2009

If you worked for the Iranian government, how would you feel about their violent response to the demonstrators who took to the streets of Tehran to protest against the disputed election?

That's the dilemma facing the presenters of Press TV, the curious 24-hour English-language television news channel which is based in an unprepossessing suburb of northwest London, and funded by the Iranian government.

The question has been raised because Nick Ferrari, a popular radio presenter with LBC, styled by his London breakfast show as 'the man that politicians fear', has resigned from his job there.

Press TV said Neda Soltani’s death had been ‘hyped by Western media outlets’

As one might expect, Press TV had refrained from extensively reporting the doubts over the veracity of the election results, or criticising the crackdown. Their latest piece on Neda Soltani's death said that it had been "hyped and dramatised by Western media outlets" and argued that, as she was killed by a pistol with a smaller calibre than that used by the Iranian security forces, it couldn't have been them who killed her.

Their stance is unquestioningly pro-Ahmadinejad; a report today on their website noted that "Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has congratulated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his victory in Iran's presidential election".

So Ferrari, who was once courted by David Cameron as a potential Mayor of London candidate, has said he thought that Press TV staff were operating on orders from above, "I imagine they've been told what to do," he said, "and I can't reconcile that with working there." Until the election, Ferrari conceded, the station's coverage had been "reasonably fair".

Ferrari's decision to quit puts Press TV's other presenters on the spot. And they are a peculiarly mixed bunch, which has included both Tories such as Derek Conway and members of the ultra-left.

Ferrari's exit is unlikely to leave George Galloway agonizing over his principles. Galloway, who hosts a show called The Real Deal, has spoken out strongly against British media bias against the Iranian government in the violent aftermath of Ahmadinejad's victory over Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

His target was the BBC, or as he calls it, "the Bush and Blair Corporation". Galloway, the leader of the Respect party, and MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, has suggested that the BBC, along with Fox, the US network, were providing "opinion masquerading as fact, at length and usually on shaky cam", and said it "may very well be that foreign hands" were behind some of the protests.

Then there's Yvonne Ridley, who recently travelled with Galloway and over a hundred vehicles across North Africa to bring aid supplies to Gaza. She is a British journalist who converted to Islam after being captured by the Taliban disguised in a burka on an undercover assignment in Afghanistan after 9/11. This conversion, Ridley said, helped her to move on from her previous reputation as the 'Patsy Stone [Joanna Lumley's character in Absolutely Fabulous] of Fleet Street'.

Now a prominent pro-Palestine/anti-war campaigner and a politician with Respect, Ridley once called on British Muslims to defy the police after a heavy-handed raid on a house in East London.

She made a detailed documentary about Guantanamo Bay and also hosts some of Press TV's talk shows, including The Agenda. When questioned after Ferrari resigned, she insisted that her show is not subject to any political interference and that she would quit if it was.

Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair's sister, also works for the station. She told the Times that her programme, Remember the Children of Palestine, was "too important for me not to make it".

But then there are those among the station's star names who can't be quite so easily pigeonholed as leftist and loud. Chief amongst these is Andrew Gilligan, the journalist whose career trajectory has taken him from resigning his BBC job after his dispute with Alastair Campbell over the Hutton inquiry, to a position as the Evening Standard's attack dog on Ken Livingstone's record as Mayor of London, and now back to theTelegraph where he worked a decade ago. Gilligan presents a discussion show called Forum for Press TV.

Conservative MP Derek Conway presented a book review show on Press TV

Derek Conway, the Tory MP who was pilloried for nepotism after it emerged that he'd paid his student son Henry for rather more work as a researcher than he'd actually done, was another unlikely Iranian government employee. Until the show was axed by the network, Conway presented Epilogue, a book review show.

Meanwhile, the Press TV website was yesterday running the following headlines: 'Quest for Judaization envelops Palestinian house', 'Former CIA chief charged with sexual assault', and ‘Detained Newsweekreporter comes clean'.

This last one concerns Maziar Bahari, a Canadian-Iranian journalist who has worked with the BBC and Channel Four, and was arrested in Tehran in the aftermath of the election.

Bahari is quoted telling a press conference, presumably under duress, that "on the brink of every velvet revolution Western media try to portray the ruling administration as the traditional, bigoted, inefficient and undemocratic side", and that the media tries to persuade the public that an upcoming election will be rigged and encourage a coup.