Pursuant to the US administration’s latest wave of confrontational policies against Tehran, Google recently moved to stifle the YouTube platform of Iran’s English-language Press TV news and documentary network, which has long sought to give voice to those peoples and communities across the world whose stories do not achieve due attention by the mainstream media, mainly in the United States.
Press TV’s verified YouTube account — along with the page of Iran’s Spanish-language Hispan TV — was blocked with no prior notice by the US-based tech giant last week. The two Iranian news channels were also denied access to their Gmail service.
Inside Iran and among Press TV viewers, the move is unanimously seen as part of a pressure campaign and media war launched by the White House under President Donald Trump against the Islamic Republic.
Press TV was launched in 2007, with a vision to “heed the often neglected voices and perspectives of a great portion of the world” and to “bring to light untold and overlooked stories of individuals who have experienced political and cultural divides firsthand,” among others.
The first Iranian international news channel — which is staffed with media professionals and extensively networked with bureaus in the world’s most strategic cities — has been working around the clock for more than a decade to make that vision come true.
Press TV has been using a wide range of platforms, from TV broadcast and website to social media, to offer its audience a fresh view of world news.
It has also been dedicated to reporting the news as it happens around the world, especially in the Middle East’s conflict zones, to a global audience often exposed to misinformation in the mainstream media, particularly those outlets based in the US and other Western states.
Press TV is especially known for its extensive coverage of the crises instigated by or involving the US one way or another in the Middle East — including the wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan — as well as the Israeli regime’s occupation of Palestinian lands and oppression of Palestinian people.
In addition, the news channel has had a special focus on the plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims — which the United Nations has described as the world’s most persecuted community.
It has been trying to shed light on a stepped-up smear campaign underway in the Western mainstream media aimed at painting a dark picture of Iran and sometimes the entire Muslim world.
The network has, furthermore, sought to lay bare American rights violations both inside and outside the US, offering an insight into Washington’s discriminatory policies and racism against its minorities and people of color.
Google’s latest attack against Press TV’s official YouTube account and Gmail service suggests the news channel has been successful in its mission.
Observers believe Google and other US-based firms are in cahoots with the Washington government and work to advance its causes regardless of international and even US law.
“As these independent news outlets are stifled and are silenced, the people of the United States will only hear what the US government approves them to hear,” Robert Fantina, an author, activist and journalist, told Press TV. “Google needs to be sued in US courts to find out why they have done this and to show that this action is unconstitutional.”
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