Iran’s Press TV Says Facebook Disabled & Restored Its Facebook Page

The web­site of Iran­ian-backed Press TV is report­ing that its Face­book page was dis­abled then restored. Accord­ing to the web­site:

Jan­u­ary 12, 2021 Face­book briefly dis­abled Press TV’s account with near­ly four mil­lion fol­low­ers, alleg­ing that Iran’s inter­na­tion­al Eng­lish news net­work was not eli­gi­ble to use the social media plat­form. In a noti­fi­ca­tion upon tak­ing down the page ear­ly on Tues­day, the US-based social media giant said the deci­sion was “final,” adding that it could not pro­vide addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion for “safe­ty and secu­ri­ty rea­sons.” Face­book, how­ev­er, reversed the deci­sion hours lat­er in response to an appeal filed by Press TV.

Read the rest here.

The state­ment goes on to allude that the rea­son for the Face­book action was Press TV’s “shock­ing” cov­er­age of the vio­lence at the US Capi­tol ear­li­er this month. Both the main Face­book Press TV Face­book page and the UK page are still cur­rent­ly operational.

In Octo­ber 2020, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR)  report­ed that Iran might be forced to shut down Press TV and oth­er for­eign lan­guage chan­nels due to finan­cial strains caused by US sanc­tions. In the same report, GIOR not­ed that Press TV’s YouTube chan­nel had been delet­ed in Jan­u­ary 2020 and that in June 2020, Face­book began to label the chan­nel as “state media.”

Press TV is part of the media struc­ture of the Iran­ian influ­ence net­work. It was found­ed in 2007 and is spon­sored by the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran Broad­cast­ing, Iran’s state-run tele­vi­sion oper­a­tion. Accord­ing to its web­site, Press TV “takes rev­o­lu­tion­ary steps as the first Eng­lish broad­cast­ing inter­na­tion­al Iran­ian news net­work.” Press TV had its UK broad­cast­ing license revoked in Jan­u­ary 2012 by British communication’s reg­u­la­tor Ofcom, which found that the chan­nel was run­ning its edi­to­r­i­al from Tehran and not from the UK, thus breach­ing the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act. In the UK, the chan­nel is direct­ed by film direc­tor and writer Hamid Khairoldin, who is also con­nect­ed to oth­er pro-Iran­ian media out­lets. A 2015 report by the US Anti-Defama­tion League details var­i­ous anti­se­mit­ic themes and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries pro­mot­ed in its programs.