Media News - Monday, February 06, 2012

BBC says Iran targeting families of its journalists

Iranian authorities are increasingly arresting and threatening the families of British Broadcasting Corporation journalists to force them to quit its Persian news service, the BBC's head said on Sunday. Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, said he was speaking out to try and embarrass Tehran to end what he said was a campaign of intimidation against Iranian staff who worked outside Iran. "What we have decided to do is to be more public than we have been before in calling for the Iranian authorities to desist from this, to ask for other governments to try and put as much pressure as they can and to hope that the embarrassment of this will get those who are responsible for these actions to think again," Thompson told BBC TV. BBC Persian staff provide Farsi-language TV, radio and online services. Few Western journalists are permitted to work in Iran where the hardline Islamic government views much of the foreign media with suspicion. The BBC's TV service has often been jammed and is only available to owners of illegal satellite receivers. Thompson said the harassment was getting worse, citing the case of a sister of a London-based BBC journalist who he said was arrested in Tehran on unspecified charges, threatened and intimidated. (Reuters)

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