Yes, I know this is of no surprise to anybody.
But Press TV has got itself into trouble again – by reporting the crackpot fantasies of a Counterpunch nutter as fact.
Here’s The JC:
A claim that a secret CIA document exists that forecasts Israel would not survive for more than 20 years has been denounced as “a ludicrous hoax”.
Here’s Kammo:
I have appeared twice on [Press TV] — the second time purely because Tony Benn was one of the other guests, and I consider he has an easy ride in the media. I have no criticisms of Gilligan as an impartial moderator.
But I recall him being surprised when, in a discussion of Iran’s nuclear diplomacy, he read out some chilling antisemitic remarks of President Ahmadinejad — and found that they elicited vigorous applause from the invited audience.
In other programmes, the choice of guests extends to the bizarrely insignificant. One recent commentator was a pro-Milosevic blogger known for faking laudatory comments about himself under female pseudonyms on third-party websites.
But the corrosive aspect of this station is not so much the idiosyncrasies of its production as the seriousness with which it advances the most disreputable of fringe causes.
…
Press TV has, rightly and importantly, the liberty to broadcast in the UK. It hardly needs stating that British journalists do not enjoy comparable liberty when reporting from Tehran. But the most significant aspect of Press TV’s role is its ability to insinuate into public debate the worst and most pernicious ideas around. It will continue without any further appearances from me.
And here’s Z Word:
Yet Press TV would like us to think – despite the bevy of conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers drawn to it as inexorably as rodents are to sewers – that it is a legitimate news operation. To the contrary, it should be boycotted by anyone who values press freedom and journalistic rigor. Which means don’t appear on it, don’t answer calls from their “correspondents,” don’t credential its “correspondents” – don’t, in fact, do anything which might allow Press TV to claim credibility when its sponsors routinely imprison, torture and murder proper journalists and bloggers.
Consign Press TV to the foul-smelling hinterland where it belongs.
