The US government-funded Voice of America’s Persian information service should “do a greater job” with its anti-Iran information protection or it dangers being shut down, US Particular Consultant for Iran Brian Hook has warned.
In an unintentionally irony-laden oped printed by the New York Publish on Wednesday, Hook wrote that VOA Persian “must do a greater job of countering Iranian disinformation and propaganda.” It is a precedence for the Trump administration which is merely attempting to “help the Iranian folks” with “truthful reporting.”
But VOA, he raged, is “failing to signify America to Iran with fact-based content material.”
In different phrases, even a US-funded propaganda outlet based in 1942 to serve the “long-range pursuits of the US” is just not as excessive in its anti-Iran reporting because the Trump administration would really like it to be. Hook went as far as to assert Iranians have complained that the outlet operates much less just like the Voice of America and extra just like the “Voice of the mullahs.”
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Hook delivered a litany of complaints about VOA, which acquired $17 million in taxpayer funds final 12 months, together with that the service aired some “nature documentaries” throughout anti-government protests sparked final November by rising gas costs.
Seemingly to strengthen his case, he additionally cited a 2013 Wall Road Journal report wherein a VOA worker stated the outlet wouldn’t air criticism of the Iranian authorities with out it being “balanced with the attitude of the Islamic Republic.”
Put one other manner, Hook would quite VOA didn’t comply with among the primary tenets of journalism by providing competing views in its reporting, and would favor its journalists to easily echo the road of the Trump administration, no questions requested.
It’s unclear how this want to ditch a basic precept of journalism may be squared with Hook’s different demand that VOA ought to keep away from giving the looks that it’s producing “pro-regime change propaganda” for the US. Evidently whereas he would really like the propaganda to be “higher” and extra refined, he would additionally favor that it didn’t seem like propaganda.
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Hook famous that Iranians undergo from “closely censored media” and require entry to “unbiased” information. Certainly, Iran has been repeatedly criticized by press freedom organizations together with Reporters With out Borders for harassment of impartial media and arrests of journalists — however a US government-funded propaganda outlet advancing the maniacal and harmful regime change objectives of the Trump administration is hardly an answer.
If it received’t ramp up its anti-Iran efforts, Congress ought to think about “ending its funding and shutting down” VOA “as a fiduciary obligation to American taxpayers,” Hook concluded.
It’s not the primary time the administration has taken purpose at its personal propaganda outfits, both.
In April, the White Home’s 1600 Each day e-newsletter provided blistering criticism of VOA, accusing it of getting “amplified Beijing’s propaganda” after the information service dared to report on celebrations in China’s Wuhan following the lifting of the Covid-19 lockdown.
Hook demonstrated his deep and honest concern for Iranians once more on Wednesday when he warned the nation that it had a alternative: Both give in to Trump’s calls for or take care of whole financial collapse. How’s that for “supporting the Iranian folks?”
