vigilant TV

Newsweek has an update on independent satellite TV broadcasts to Iran, which were covered by The Guardian last year. The Iranian government accuses the broadcasters of being CIA propaganda tools, and has reportedly begun using mobile equipment to jam reception in some areas. Broadcasters say they receive no government funding, relying mainly on support from Iranian expats living in Los Angeles. Either way, they’re providing perhaps the only independent political reporting in Iran.

HOMAYOUN’S CHANNEL ONE is one of a half dozen L.A. satellite TV stations beaming signals of political unrest into Iran. Many offer a combination of entertainment, politics and news, but several have set out specifically to assist Iranian protesters and dissidents in their efforts to bring political change to the Islamic theocracy. The stations began springing up four years ago, as illegal satellite dishes sprouted on the roofs of homes in Tehran, Shiraz and the rest of the country. In the past few weeks, the Iranian government has sent microwave trucks into the streets to jam the signals, and officials renewed denunciations of the U.S.-based stations. Blaming the American satellite personalities as “sons of members of SAVAK [the secret police under the shah’s rule] … and of counterrevolutionaries,” former president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani warned last week: “Be careful not to be trapped by the evil television stations that America has established.” The hard-line clergy blamed everything on the stations. “The student demonstrations have been provoked by the foreign-based satellite programs,” railed the Ayatollah Ali Khameini.

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Iranian officials dismiss the satellite mavens as tools of the CIA, but the satellite executives deny drawing money from the U.S. government. (Earlier this year, Sen. Sam Brownback introduced a bill to fund Iranian dissident groups and broadcasters, but it’s a long way from passage.) In fact, they’re lucky to break even. Channel One is housed in a one-story industrial park down the block from a Home Depot, and Homayoun broadcasts with a fake living room featuring a faux aquarium. NITV emanates from a warehouse that used to be the home of a company that made porn films. A small number of advertisers aiming at viewers in the United States and Europe hawk everything from carpets to vitamins.

– Newsweek, Satellite Provocateurs.