About Press TV

Press TV

Press TV is an Iranian state-owned international news organisation operated by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and headquartered in Tehran. It broadcasts 24 hours a day in English and French, with its English service the flagship, and was launched in July 2007 to present news, images and arguments, especially on Middle Eastern affairs, from an Iranian perspective to a worldwide audience. It was intended to compete with Western English-language services such as BBC World News, CNN International and Al Jazeera English, and its stated aim was to heed the often neglected voices and perspectives of a great portion of the world and to break what it called the global media stranglehold of Western outlets.

Press TV is also one of the most controversial channels in this directory. Supporters present it as an alternative voice; critics, regulators and governments have described it as an outlet for Iranian government propaganda, fined it, revoked its licence in the United Kingdom, removed it from major satellite platforms and sanctioned it. A factual profile must record both the channel's own account of its mission and that documented record of dispute, because together they explain Press TV's place in international broadcasting: a technically professional, well-resourced news channel whose distribution has been shaped as much by politics and sanctions as by audience demand.

Ownership and place within IRIB

Press TV is owned by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state-controlled corporation that is the only organisation legally able to transmit radio and television broadcasts inside Iran. IRIB, known in Iran as Seda o Sima, is headquartered in Tehran, holds the monopoly of domestic radio and television services in Iran, and is headed by a director-general appointed directly by the Supreme Leader. Press TV is state-funded and operates as a division of IRIB, in its international or World Service side, alongside sister channels including the Arabic-language Al-Alam News Network and the Spanish-language HispanTV.

Press TV itself is not shown as a domestic channel for Iranian viewers at home in the way IRIB's Persian services are; it was built for export. Based in Tehran, it broadcasts to North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and parts of Africa and Latin America. Its chief executive at launch, Mohammad Sarafraz, was also deputy head of IRIB in charge of foreign channels, a dual role that embodied the channel's position as an instrument of the state broadcaster's international operation. Its annual budget was reported as 250 billion rials, more than 8.3 million US dollars, as of 2009, by which time the station was employing more than 400 people throughout the world.

Background and launch in July 2007

Press TV was not Iran's first attempt at English-language television. An earlier international English-language channel had been established in 1976, and in 1997 IRIB launched Sahar TV, broadcasting in multiple languages including English. Press TV was created as a dedicated, modern, 24-hour English news service for the satellite age. Its website was established in January 2007, and the channel itself went on air in July 2007; reference listings give its launch date as 8 July 2007, while contemporary reporting describes its inauguration by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a ceremony on 2 July 2007. Ahmadinejad said at the inauguration that Press TV should broadcast the truth to the world and should be a podium for freedom seekers and Muslims of the world.

At a June 2007 press conference, Sarafraz explained the thinking behind the channel: since September 11, he argued, Western bias had divided the media into camps, and Press TV wanted to show that there was a different view, adding that Iran, and Shia Muslims in particular, had become a focal point of world propaganda and that the channel was trying to give a second eye to Western audiences. The Iranian government said it hoped, through Press TV and Al-Alam, to address a global audience exposed to misinformation about the Islamic Republic. The channel began with a network of correspondents reported at launch as about 30 around the world, including in Washington, New York and the Gaza Strip, with bureaus and correspondents also recorded in London, Moscow, Rome, Cairo, Brussels, Beijing, Beirut and the West Bank.

Programming and editorial approach

Press TV is a rolling news channel, broadcasting news every half hour at launch alongside documentaries, talk shows and discussion programmes. Its bulletins often feature Iranian ministers, diplomats and government officials, or guest commentators expressing views consistent with the Iranian government's position, and the channel promotes Iranian foreign policy. Its coverage is pro-Palestinian, opposed to sanctions against Iran, and strongly critical of United States and Israeli policy in the Middle East. The channel itself frames that approach as showing the other side of the story and giving a platform to actors and perspectives it says Western media neglect.

The channel employed many non-Iranian contributors, and its anchors spoke fluent English, often with British accents, giving it a presentation style modelled on global outlets such as CNN, Al Jazeera and the BBC. Press TV began activities in London during 2007, where Press TV Limited sold programmes, principally talk shows, to Iran, while Tehran produced the majority of the news and documentaries. A former diplomatic assessment circulated after its first months described widely dispersed correspondents, a large staff in Tehran and London, aggressive recruitment of guests and generally high technical quality, while noting consistently one-sided criticism of United States foreign policy and little direct criticism of Iranian government policies or leaders. Academic analysis similarly describes Press TV as foregrounding neglected voices and untold stories in its own vision, while functioning as the global English-language arm of the Iranian state.

The Maziar Bahari case and the loss of the UK licence

The most consequential single incident in Press TV's history concerned the Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, a Newsweek contributor arrested while filming the protests after Iran's contested presidential election in 2009. Held in Evin Prison for 118 days and accused of spying, Bahari alleged that a short Press TV interview in which he said Western media had fomented the protests had been preceded by torture and given under threat of execution, and that its coerced nature was not disclosed to viewers. He complained to Ofcom, the British broadcasting regulator.

Ofcom ruled that Press TV had committed a serious breach of British broadcasting rules over the Bahari interview and fined it 100,000 pounds in 2011. Separately, Ofcom established that editorial control of the channel lay in Tehran rather than with the London licensee, and, after Press TV Limited failed to make the necessary application to correct its licensing position, Ofcom revoked Press TV's licence to broadcast in the United Kingdom on 20 January 2012. The channel was removed from the Sky platform. Press TV's chief executive accused the regulator of being part of a government campaign against the channel and called the decision a desperate measure. The Bahari case has remained central to later judgements about the channel, and United States sanctions in 2023 cited the broadcaster's forced-confession broadcasts.

Removal from satellites and sanctions

The loss of the British licence was the first of a series of distribution blows. In April 2012 the Munich-based regulator BLM announced the removal of Press TV from the SES Astra satellite on the ground that it did not have a licence to broadcast in Europe. In October 2012 the French-owned operator Eutelsat and Intelsat stopped broadcasting several Iranian satellite channels in compliance with European Union sanctions, and in February 2013 the United States banned the satellite broadcast of Press TV in compliance with sanctions on IRIB; the channel was dropped from the Galaxy 19 platform that had carried it in the United States and Canada. In November 2012, Hong Kong-based AsiaSat also took Iranian channels off air in East Asia. IRIB managed at points to resume broadcasts through deals with smaller companies in other countries.

The pattern repeated a decade later. On 14 November 2022 the European Union imposed sanctions on a number of Iranian institutions and individuals, including Press TV, over alleged rights violations following unrest in Iran, and in December 2022 Eutelsat notified Press TV of a plan to take the network off air. Canada had also sanctioned the broadcaster. Press TV and commentators supporting it have consistently described these measures as attempts to muzzle free speech and silence alternative views, while the governments and regulators concerned have presented them as sanctions and licensing enforcement against a state propaganda outlet. Through all of these removals, Press TV maintained a robust online presence, and viewers have continued to reach its live broadcast through its website and mobile applications even where satellite carriage was withdrawn.

Criticism and contested coverage

Beyond licensing, Press TV's content has drawn sustained criticism that a complete profile should summarise fairly. British regulator Ofcom found in August 2009 that two phone-in shows hosted by George Galloway had broken its impartiality code in coverage of the Gaza war. The Anti-Defamation League and British newspapers accused the station of broadcasting antisemitic conspiracy theories and giving a platform to Holocaust deniers, citing material republished on its website and appearances by extremist commentators. Commentators in 2012 described it directly as the Iranian government's propaganda channel, and its coverage of Iran's disputed 2009 election, announcing results very quickly and characterising protesters as seditionists and rioters according to a former journalist at the station, was widely cited as evidence of a lack of journalistic independence.

The channel has disputed accusations made against it. Its defenders, including its first London news editor, argued in print that it was willing to give a platform to legitimate actors whom Western media would not touch, and the channel presents its mission as corrective rather than propagandistic. The honest summary is that both descriptions exist in the documented record and rest on the same underlying fact: Press TV is a state-funded channel of the Islamic Republic, professionally produced, openly committed to an Iranian perspective on world affairs, and judged by foreign regulators and critics by standards it does not accept. Readers of this directory should approach its output with that status in mind, as they would any state international broadcaster.

Languages, reach and how to watch

Press TV broadcasts principally in English and French; reference listings for the organisation also record Turkish and Hebrew among its languages. Its English service remains the flagship and the subject of most international attention. In Iran it can be received terrestrially in Tehran on the Jamaran and Alvand digital transmitters, and internationally it has been carried by a changing set of satellites and platforms, including a listing on Zuku TV in Kenya, as well as continuously by live streaming on its websites at presstv.ir and presstv.co.uk and through its applications. Because carriage has repeatedly changed under sanctions and licensing decisions, the website is the most reliable route for a current viewer.

Its sister channels place it in a family of Iranian state international services: Al-Alam in Arabic, HispanTV in Spanish, Sahar TV in multiple languages, Jame Jam for the Persian diaspora and iFilm for entertainment. Among them, Press TV is the news flagship and the most politically prominent, the channel foreign governments have chosen to sanction by name.

Press TV today

Press TV continues to broadcast from Tehran as IRIB's 24-hour English and French language news service, presenting an Iranian perspective on world events to an international audience through satellite where carriage remains, and worldwide through the internet. Its founding facts are settled: website in January 2007, on air in July 2007 with its recorded launch date of 8 July 2007, created to compete with Western English-language news and to give Western audiences, in its chief executive's phrase, a second eye. Its later history is equally a part of the record: the Ofcom fine of 100,000 pounds and licence revocation of January 2012, satellite removals in Europe, North America and Asia in 2012 and 2013, and European Union sanctions in November 2022.

For the directory user, Press TV is the essential Iranian entry in the world of international news channels: state-owned, Tehran-headquartered, professionally staffed across several continents at its height, and defined, more than any entertainment or domestic service in this list, by the argument between its claim to be an alternative voice for neglected perspectives and its critics' claim that it is the voice of the Iranian government itself.