The Media Dispute in London Favors Tehran’s Security Forces
The media dispute in London favors Tehran’s security forces. Media competition is a natural and obvious aspect. In the media industry, like other fields, there is serious competition to attract more audience.
Essentially, each media outlet, based on its foundation and approach, has its own dedicated audience and is always striving to outpace its competitors through diversity and quality in content production along with attractiveness in form.
Different components of a specific media outlet that compete with each other in a specific geographical market or part of a geographical market to sell their content to audiences or provide advertisers access to audiences can be substitutes for each other. This statement does not mean that there are no differences between the content produced or the audiences they reach.
The existing differences in production and market segmentation lead to diversity, but the substitutability capabilities of different components of a specific media outlet are greater than the substitutability of different media outlets.
For one media outlet to directly replace another, it must have a significant similarity in form and content, strive to attract similar audiences, and operate in the same geographical market. For example, in the newspaper industry, if the content and the way advertisements are reflected are similar, a local newspaper can be replaced with another newspaper operating in the same geographical market.
Now, considering the above points, it is easy to understand that the main competition among Persian-language media outside the country is limited to two television channels: BBC Persian and Iran International. The first dispute began when the emerging International TV started recruiting presenters and journalists from its rival.
However, given the conditions inside the country, due to the limitations of relatively independent media like reference and critical newspapers and magazines, and the disastrous approach of the national broadcasting organization, the speed and slope of the shift in media authority towards London intensified in a surprising way. The BBC, which was the only media favored by the audience inside the country before the emergence of a new competitor, now not only saw a serious rival beside it but also faced the migration of some of its influential staff to International TV.
However, all these issues did not cause the BBC to deviate from its standards and regulations to retain its audience at any cost. BBC Persian, as part of the large BBC news agency, is certainly subject to its higher-level instructions and regulations.
But the BBC’s competitor, with fewer limitations and perhaps a larger budget, was able to more easily align itself with the tastes of some audiences, who were mostly internal opponents and protesters, and succeeded in gaining more audience satisfaction with a more aggressive approach towards the performance of the Islamic Republic, even at the cost of deviating from the principle of neutrality. In the meantime, the emergence of a key term put more pressure on the BBC: the term ‘Ayatollah BBC,’ which was based on an old accusation regarding the effective role of BBC Radio in the victory of the 1979 revolution. This polarization advanced to the point where it led to a protest gathering in front of the BBC in London, and the BBC was accused of not properly covering the recent protests in Iran.
However, the leaked audio file of Rana Rahimpour, a veteran BBC presenter, who in a conversation with her family shared her personal analysis of the events and also accused the rival television, created a new controversy between these two media.
To the extent that Iran International not only addressed this issue on its social media but also in a news segment, and even in one of its produced programs by Mojtaba Pourmohsen, unprecedentedly criticized Rana Rahimpour and BBC Persian, and even implicitly accused Rahimpour of collaborating with the security agencies of the Islamic Republic.
However, aside from all the disputes between the two rivals, which mostly originated from Iran International, the fundamental question is who benefits from this conflict. Naturally, any gap between media streams that have the freedom to critique the ruling political system in the open space outside the country and reflect news and events without censorship only benefits the internal security agencies, allowing them to exploit this gap to discredit and delegitimize these media.
Similar to the actions of Javan newspaper, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, or Tasnim, the media outlet of the Guards, in deliberately reflecting Rana Rahimpour’s statements, which led Iran International to use this as evidence of Rahimpour’s alleged collaboration with the political police of the Islamic Republic. In any case, if this dispute has any winners, it is only the security system of the Islamic Republic, which can weaken and discredit these media by exploiting this gap and reduce their effectiveness.
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