Ofcom clears Iranian TV station over woman's murder reconstruction
Is this
really the right sort of job for TV censors who usually spend all their time deliberating how sex on TV can be further reduced?
These are diplomatic and human rights issues where people's lives are at risk. It comes across as pathetic that Ofcom
somehow take the word of the abominable Iranian authorities that the participants were not under duress. There is simply no point throwing 'taste and decency' concerns around like this. They may just as well try to impose a rule of no death by stoning
before the 9pm watershed.
Ofcom has ruled that Iran's state-run Press TV station, which has offices in London, did not breach the UK's broadcasting rules in transmitting a programme that showed an Iranian woman participating in the reconstruction of her alleged part in the murder
of her husband.
In response to a complaint made by the Iranian human rights campaigner Fazel Hawramy, who asked whether it was ethical for Press TV to make the imprisoned son play his murdered father, Ofcom said in a letter, seen by the Guardian,
that the broadcaster had not breached its code.
Given the broadcaster's assurances that both Sakineh Ashtiani and her son willingly participated in this programme, we considered that the context was not materially misleading so as to cause harm
and offence, Adam Baxter, standards executive of the media regulator, wrote to Hawramy.
Maryam Namazie and Mina Ahadi, have had their pages on Facebook disabled.
Both were campaigning to save Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani from being stoned to death in Iran.
Maryam and Mina have asked for support in their campaign to get their
Facebook pages reinstated.
ICAS' Abbas Goya has started a campaign on Facebook itself.
Update: One Restored, One to Go
22nd September 2010. From Maryam
Namazie
By the way, Facebook had disabled Mina and my accounts recently right before the 18 September day of action for Sakineh and against stoning. After many letters of protest from supporters, and an
open letter to Facebook founders by a number of well-known personalities, my account has been enabled again, though Mina's
has not. Please keep writing to Facebook until they enable her account as well.