Iran’s government just vowed to prosecute people who “cooperate with satellite television programming providers.” Along with blocking Twitter and messing with cell-phone networks, it means the power mongers are declaring war on 21st-Century news breaking.
It’s part of the ongoing crackdown on the media spurred by the recent elections, of course. In an attempt to establish some kind of control over the populace and how much information is getting out of the country, the government was at first barring access to certain websites and blocking Twitter–which was being used to organize demonstrations. Journalists visas were then revoked, cutting off much of the traditional old media system.
And now there’s this news that Ayatollah Seyyed Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, head of the judiciary, has issued a statement targeting “individuals, who in any way collaborate with these networks or are entrenched in the nucleus of organizations which are active through internet sites” and stating that they “must be adequately and properly subject to legal actions.” It’s basically trying to sever the citizen journalism links that are feeding dribs and drabs of news data to organizations like CNN, the BBC, the AP and so on. It’s a tacit attempt to break the entire new-media news-breaking set-up, that … >>>
