Iran Launches English-Language Web TV Channel

Iran has launched an English-language 24-hour news channel called Press TV, which with al-Jazeera should satisfy all your anti-American propaganda needs. I've watched a couple of hours of the programming late last night and some of it is fascinating stuff, with some apparently English and American-born reporters and commenters joining the male and (headscarfed) female anchors on screen.

While much of the reporting is predictably anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian, the discussions I've seen seem rather frank, especially regarding the discord within the Palestinian and other Muslim ranks. A quote from a commenter: "I do not blame the wolf [Israel] for attacking the children of Palestine, that is the nature of the wolf. I blame the Muslims of the world for turning their backs on Palestine." And naturally they then give airtime to some anti-Zionist Ultra Orthodox Jews, during which the reporter asks them if they aren't "self-loathing Jews". Anchors also mention American casualties in Iraq, including providing a running total of U.S. soldiers killed there.

Press TV's production values are somewhat between local PBS and public access TV here in America and they have an annoying habit of drifting off into odd, sort of dreamy animated music segments intercut with images of the various occupations. The anchors are quite Western-like in their solemnity and the stories repeat frequently, a la CNN Headline News. Western media doesn't provide us with the whole story on many issues and while you obviously must regard much of what Press TV says very skeptically, I think we do ourselves a disservice to ignore the growing web access to their viewpoints. The link to the live webcast is at the top of their page.