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Iranian spy service threatening, blackmailing global media outlets to ensure positive coverage

Sep 6, 2017 2:28 pm By Robert Spencer

“Outlets such as the BBC and Voice of America have been subjected to threats and in some cases have had their computers hijacked by Iran, according to the report, which states that ‘all international media outlets with Persian-language services are concerned’ about the Islamic Republic’s often-secret efforts to blackmail reporters in order to gain positive headlines.

This explains a lot.

“Iranian Spy Service Threatening, Blackmailing Global Media Outlets,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, September 6, 2017:

Iran’s clandestine spy network has been threatening and blackmailing scores of journalists, even going so far as to detain and threaten the family members of these reporters, in order to ensure positive coverage in global media outlets, according to a new report that estimates at least 50 international journalists have been threatened in just the past year.

Iran uses its network of spies and its hardline judiciary to threaten journalists with punishment and in many cases detain family members in order to use them as leverage against Western reporters, according to a new report by Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, a watchdog group that advocates for freedom of the press.

Outlets such as the BBC and Voice of America have been subjected to threats and in some cases have had their computers hijacked by Iran, according to the report, which states that “all international media outlets with Persian-language services are concerned” about the Islamic Republic’s often-secret efforts to blackmail reporters in order to gain positive headlines.

The effort is just one part of how Iran blackmails, threatens, and manipulates journalists and dissident voices in order to suppress coverage of its human rights abuses and other illicit activities, such as an ongoing massive military buildup aimed at confronting Western nations such as the United States.

“In the past year, RSF has learned of ten families of journalists who have been summoned to such interviews, usually with intelligence ministry agents,” according to the report. “In all, at least 50 journalists based abroad have been threatened in some way in the same period. At least 16 of them have received death threats.”

During international nuclear negotiations in Vienna, Lausanne, and elsewhere, the Washington Free Beacon independently witnessed Iranian reporters allied with the country’s state-controlled media organizations monitoring reporters and snapping pictures of them as they worked.

This is part of Iran’s efforts to monitor and track reporters who cover the country for a range of influential outlets, sources told the Free Beacon.

“It was insane,” one writer who is critical of Iran and attended the nuclear negotiations in Vienna told the Free Beacon. “They would openly get in the faces of Iranian reporters from Western outlets and take pictures just to make sure that the journalists knew that the regime knew who they were and they were being watched. It’s impossible to imagine this didn’t significantly influences the coverage that came out of the nuclear talks, and even more broadly.”

Sources who spoke to RSF, often anonymously to avoid repercussions from Iran, such as imprisonment, told the organization that the country’s intelligence services have issued threats and in some cases detained the family members of these reporters.

“It is not just BBC Persian employees who are targeted,” the report states. “All international media outlets with Persian-language services are concerned, regardless of the country in which the media are based. Journalists with Radio Farda (Radio Free Europe’s Persian-language section), with such state-funded broadcasters as Voice of America, Deutsche Welle and Radio France Internationale, and privately-owned broadcasters such as Manoto TV and Radio Zamaneh have also been threatened by Iran’s intelligence services or judicial system.”

Most of those who spoke to RSF about Iran’s activities to monitor and threaten the press “asked not to be identified” out of fear of reprisals from the regime. However, some did speak on record.

Arman Mostofi, the director of Radio Farda, was quoted as telling the organization that at least four of his reports have been targeted with death threats.

“These threats are obviously not signed,” Mostofi told RSF. “They sometimes take the form of a comment beneath an article. The journalist may subsequently be contacted in another way but it’s exactly the same message that will be transmitted. Sometimes the message includes information that only members of the intelligence services could know.”

Family members also have become the subject of threats, according to the report.

Fahimeh Khezr Heidari, a Radio Farda host, recounted efforts by anonymous individuals to force the broadcast’s cancellation.

“Ms. Khezr Heidari, Monday will be a horrible day for a member of your family because you did not take our last warning seriously. Thank you, my corrupt sister,” read one message sent at the reporter.

Mohammadreza Nikfar, editor-in-chief of Radio Zamaneh, disclosed that the family members of some reporters have been seized by Iranian intelligence agents.

“The family of one of our journalists was summoned by intelligence ministry agents,” Nikfar recounted. “After showing articles by him that had been posted on our website, they said: ‘Tell him to stop collaborating with Radio Zamaneh.'”

“Another journalist, a former prisoner of conscience, has been threatened several times by telephone. They tell him his family will suffer the consequences if he does not return to Iran,” Nikfar said.

The threats and intimidation tactics also extend to the cyber arena, according to others who experienced attempts by individuals to hack their computers.

At least five journalists have been arrested upon landing in Iran and handed harsh sentence’s ranging from three to 12 years in prison, according to the RSF report.

The tactics have a tangible effect on these reporters and the stories they file, RSF concluded.

“When your father calls and an intelligence ministry agent takes the phone and says, ‘your father is here and we’re talking about you,’ and you know that your family is being harassed and is in danger of being arrested, how can your write freely?” one reporter for an international outlet who declined to be named was quoted as telling RSF. “After members of my family had been summoned for questioning, I could no longer work as I had before.”…

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Filed Under: Iran, journalistic bias Tagged With: Reporters Without Borders


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Comments

  1. Santa Voorhees says

    Sep 6, 2017 at 2:59 pm

    …. and then they wonder why buddhists are killing them. Hypocrites!

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 6, 2017 at 4:44 pm

      Actually, in Myanmar (Burma), it is often Muslims slaughtering Infidel victims:

      “Myanmar: Muslims murder dozens of Hindus”

      https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/09/myanmar-muslims-murder-dozens-of-hindus

      “Myanmar: 71 dead as Muslims mount jihad attacks on police and border outposts”

      https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/08/myanmar-muslims-murder-71-in-jihad-attacks-on-police-and-border-outposts

      “Myanmar: 4,000 non-Muslims evacuated as Muslims step up jihad attacks”

      https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/08/myanmar-4000-non-muslims-evacuated-as-muslims-step-up-jihad-attacks

      • Santa Voorhees says

        Sep 6, 2017 at 11:26 pm

        I think you disn’t understand my point.

        I was trying to say that muslims threaten, rape and kill buddhists, and then they whine because buddhists fight back.

        • Santa Voorhees says

          Sep 6, 2017 at 11:27 pm

          *didn’t

        • John Forbes says

          Sep 7, 2017 at 6:58 am

          No one has to black mail the BBC ! They are on the ISLAMIC SIDE anyway !!

  2. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Sep 6, 2017 at 3:36 pm

    Jeez, one wonders how the coverage could be any better for Moslems, and that includes the two Fox RINO channels. Blackmail away anyway, the spectacle will be fun to see.

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 6, 2017 at 4:46 pm

      I usually have other ways of having fun…

  3. Walter Sieruk says

    Sep 6, 2017 at 4:10 pm

    This cruel brutal and oppressive Islamic tyranny of Iran which so inappropriately has the word “Republic” in its title. This islamic tyranny has also been, fittingly, nicknamed “The mullah regime .of Iran” This mullah regime is murderous to the Iranian people trapped within that Islamic regimes borders . Likewise this mullahs regime also murderous to the American troops in Afghanistan because it funds and supports the Taliban which kills American troops. This may seem strange since Iran is Shi ite and the Taliban is Sunni and the members of those two different branches of Islam hate each other.. Nevertheless, the Mullahs and other Shi ‘ite Muslims in power in Iran hate Americans even more than they hate the Taliban. Likewise ,Iran’s heads of that Islamic rogue state also hate the Jewish people and therefore hate the Jewish State of Israel. So this mullah regime created and fund Islamic killimg entities known as Hamas and Hezbollah . Those two islamic killing entities were make to murder Israeli citizens, and they have.
    Hamas and Hezballahs have also murdered Americans . Hezballah the greater number of dead American Hamas the lesser number. .Nevertheless they were all murdered.
    Now the scheming mullahs and ayatollahs and other in power in Iran have their mad Islamic quest to obtain W M D. There evil sadly had no limits to their demonic and heinous fruits.
    Jesus did teach “By their fruits you will recognize them.” Matthew 7:20. [N.I.V.]

  4. Custos Custodum says

    Sep 6, 2017 at 4:26 pm

    You cannot hope
    to bribe or twist,
    thank God! the
    British journalist.

    But, seeing what
    the man will do
    unbribed, there’s
    no occasion to.

    (Humbert Wolfe)

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 6, 2017 at 4:50 pm

      Grimly all too true most of the time, I’m afraid.

  5. gravenimage says

    Sep 6, 2017 at 4:33 pm

    Iranian spy service threatening, blackmailing global media outlets to ensure positive coverage
    ……………………..

    If Western media outlets have any integrity–not a sure bet at this point, of course–they will not cave to these threats.

  6. Irene Brekelmans says

    Sep 6, 2017 at 5:11 pm

    Who caves now days in the Western world? Gravenimage, thanks for your explanation about chemtrails the other day and about the happenings before the 2nd world war. But what is the leftists goal in all this,
    There must be something big, is it a new World Order or is it that Islam should conquer the whole world?

    I would really like to know, it must really be big, if the West is rolling over and let themselves collaps, why do they keep that such a secret and I know that Islam wants to conquer the world, all of us, but knowing that, why would all those people roll over, I don’t get it. Can you or somebody enlighten me about that?

  7. mortimer says

    Sep 6, 2017 at 9:46 pm

    Investigative journalism is the protection that ordinary people rely on to protect them from the most evil of tyrants.

    Media that refuse to investigate are refusing to defend the people who rely on them. They are traitors who should rightly be shamed and abandoned by the people. I include CNN and NYT as two of the greatest traitors for failing to cover tyranny and tyrants and for giving them a free pass from criticism.

  8. Georg says

    Sep 6, 2017 at 9:55 pm

    Iran is such a great example of the logical conclusion of Islam. Saudi with Sunni. Pick your poison, but it’s all darkness.

  9. Jayell says

    Sep 7, 2017 at 1:44 am

    All this with Iran, then you hear that the Pakistan government is throwing its weight around censoring Facebook, Google and PayPal have been infected, and that’s on top of all the infiltration and interference with other Western governments and institutions….. Nobody wants any of it, yet these malignant, slimy so-and-so’s carry on getting away with it. It’s like Al Capone and Associates Inc. getting inside the entire Chicago media and infrastructure and twisting the lot into an ugly, corrupt criminal mess. And no one’s got the integrity, self-respect or just plain guts to DO something about it – unless your name’s Robert Spencer.

  10. isntlam says

    Sep 7, 2017 at 11:18 am

    No need to threaten US mainstream media outlets.

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