Here in the UK, we have a colourful history of advertising the official media of fascist regimes.
Why, here is an archive photo of a London bus from the early 1930s.
And here, continuing the tradition, is one from yesterday evening.
Okay, so the first one is a fake. Unfortunately, the second one isn’t. Our grandparents generation clearly had more sense than we do. We have no sense, and it appears we have no shame.
The acceptance of adverts from Iranian state-sponsored broadcaster PressTV, is particularly perverse. Mansour Osanlou, an Iranian transport worker and trade unionist is languishing in jail. Having suffered brutality and torture, he is almost blind from the beatings he received at the hands of the Iranian authorities. But, while his comrades struggle on and while the International Transport Worker’s Union is acting in support of Iranian democrats, our own TfL is taking money to punt their oppressor’s propaganda arm: PressTV.
Incidentally, I wonder what the Advertising Standards Authoritywould make of the claims in the PressTV advert. Laughably, the advert claims the channel “gives as voice to the voiceless” and offers “24/7 truth”. The truly voiceless like Mansour Osanloo don’t get a spot on PressTV, but loudmouth shills and propogandists do.