More information on the Cuban jamming. -- DoctorZin
Expatriate Television Excites Iran
By J. Michael Waller
Aug 6, 2003
Private citizens started a successful news and information operation against the Iranian regime long before the U.S. government decided to do so at the Voice of America. Iranian-American businessmen in California, not federal diplomats or information warriors, founded the first significant TV stations to break through the fundamentalist regime's censorship, even as U.S. government broadcasts seemed carefully tailored not to offend the mullahs.
One of the half-dozen expatriate channels is National Iranian Television (NITV) based near Los Angeles. Rock musician Zia Atabay started NITV several years ago as a business to serve the nearly 1 million Iranian expatriates and Americans and Canadians of Iranian descent who now live across North America. Soon, however, Atabay's channel took on a political dimension to try to liberate the land of his birth after a technical glitch accidentally uplinked the signal to a satellite that beamed the programming into Iran. NITV was an instant hit, with thousands of callers from Iran flooding NITV's telephones and fax machines, turning the channel into an interactive forum for Iranians anxious to expose the corruption and cruelty of the regime, while serving as a 24-hour telebridge to the United States.
The regime soon jammed the transmissions, but NITV raised more funds for stronger, seemingly jamproof, uplinks via Telestar-12.
Since the Cuba-based jamming of Telestar-12, Atabay's privately funded enterprise is pushing him toward bankruptcy, forcing him soon to lay off workers.
So what is the Bush administration doing to support NITV? On July 29, President George W. Bush in his press conference made a pointed reference to Atabay's efforts. "There's a TV station ... that is broadcast out of Los Angeles by one of our citizens. He ... has footed the bill. It's widely watched. ... The people of Iran are interested in freedom and we stand by their side." The president apparently had not been briefed on Cuba's jamming.
"In no way are they helping us," says an NITV staffer, before tracking down Atabay for this reporter. "I'm an American," Atabay tells Insight. "I'm American, but my government doesn't support me. I told the State Department, 'If I'm doing something wrong, tell me, what did I do?' They said, 'You're doing great.'"
By not supporting the most influential Iranian-American broadcaster, the Bush administration is by inaction handing a victory to the mullahs ruling Teheran. In Atabay's words, "They are going to shut my mouth in America by remote control from Iran."
J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight.
http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1607.shtml